Is Iran funding the ANC?
If the ANC refuses to come clean about recent cash injections, people will draw their own conclusions, far-fetched or not. Journalist Alec Hogg says: “It’s hard to miss the coincidence between the ANC’s miraculous financial rejuvenation and the country’s sudden interest in forcing a ceasefire in Gaza. An obsession costing SA taxpayers hundreds of millions of rands through their funding of the high-profile prosecution against Israel in the UN’s International Court of Justice (ICJ).”
Similar views are shared on social media, without proof.
Last month, the ANC owed R102 million to a service provider from a previous election. Having dragged on for years, the debt was settled a week before the government used our tax money to pay for an application in the ICJ to have Israel declared guilty of genocide. Do these dots join?
Despite South African hype, the case against Israel was poorly argued by lawyers who had not done their homework, specifically on the requirements for proving genocidal intent. This may become clearer when the ICJ rules on South Africa’s request for a preliminary order to demand Israel stop fighting. A final ruling could take years, but there will be an answer.
However, we may never know the origins of the ANC’s latest bonanza, as the party refuses to explain.
By withholding information, the ANC is violating the Political Party Funding Act passed by an ANC-dominated parliament. The Act is designed inter alia: “To prohibit certain donations made directly to political parties; to regulate disclosure of donations accepted.”
The EFF, sponsored by cigarette smugglers, may not take the Act seriously. But the governing party should adhere.
In March last year, it was disclosed that the ANC had received a R15 million donation from a firm owned by a Putin-connected Russian oligarch. R15 million is the maximum a party may receive from a single donor per year.
Therefore, nimble accounting would be required for any one donor to wipe out the ANC’s R102 million debt. Difficult but not impossible, as the Act allows multiple donations of R15 million from different entities with links to the same person.
How did the ANC do it, and via whom? Similar questions are being raised about the ANC’s extravagant celebrations in Mbombela last weekend. How does an organisation which so often struggles to pay its own staff, find the money for these jamborees? What are they not telling us?
Among the guesses – if the funding is linked to the ICJ application – would be Iran. There were meetings between SA and Iranian officials before and after the 7 October Hamas attack on Israel.
Designated by the US as a “state sponsor of terrorism”, Iran is listed as “providing weapons systems and other support to Hamas and other US-designated Palestinian terrorist groups, including Palestine Islamic Jihad...”
Iran supplies Yemen’s Houthi rebels, who have been attacking commercial ships in the Red Sea.
Following the August 2023 Brics summit, Iran became a member. Are SA’s new Brics partners funding the ANC, while we pay for lawyers to promote Hamas’ cause?