ANC may have to change sponsor model
VOTERS ARE ENTITLED TO QUESTION IF AND HOW THE PARTY EVALUATES GIFTS, DONATIONS AND SPONSORSHIPS
Bosasa made no secret of sponsoring ANC election campaigns and events, emblazoning its logos on everything from posters and banners at lekgotlas to lunch boxes.
The facilities management firm’s emblems were prominent on an enormous birthday cake given to former president Jacob Zuma by the ANC on his 72nd birthday, just four years ago.
The ANC’s enthusiasm about its Bosasa association was strange, given that at least since 2009 the company was facing the prospect of prosecution for corruption. When it came to party funding or sponsorship, it seems, the ANC didn’t care where the money came from.
But that will have to change, as growing numbers of voters demand information about who is paying for the free T-shirts and sandwiches that swamp political events at every election.
The Bosasa scandal, which follows allegations of kickbacks to the ANC as part of the cancelled Swifambo locomotive
deal and contested claims that VBS Mutual Bank sponsored an SACP event to the tune of R3m, again raises the importance of access to such information. The effect of the lack of transparency about party funding has become apparent in the evidence led at the Zondo commission about the allegedly corrupt relationship between the ANC and Bosasa.
Just two years after the Special Investigating Unit (SIU) handed over a damning report about Bosasa’s alleged corruption of the department of correctional services, the Gauteng ANC allowed the company effectively to pay for its 2011 lekgotla.
As the SIU called for the prosecution of key state and Bosasa officials, ANC heavyweights ignored the growing evidence that the company was implicated in serious wrongdoing — and enjoyed their Bosasa-sponsored chicken wings instead.
Former Bosasa COO Angelo Agrizzi has given detailed evidence that this multimillionrand party sponsorship was rewarded with multibillion-rand government tenders, many of which were allegedly won through tender rigging.
The detailed evidence by Agrizzi and many other former Bosasa employees has painted a disturbing picture of how lunch boxes, T-shirts, birthday cakes, birthday parties and rallies were used to capture the loyalty of the governing party, in ways that would directly subvert proper tender processes.
In one example, Agrizzi testified how Bosasa would fraudulently invoice multimillion-rand computer software used in the management of awaiting-trial children in North West youth centres. But, he said, the software was there already — and the money paid for it was instead handed over to ANC officials for use in party funding and electioneering.
The ANC has yet to respond substantively to these claims. But certain facts are beyond dispute: the party continued to receive large amounts of funding from Bosasa, despite clear evidence of corruption.
Voters would be entitled to question if and how the party evaluates the donations, sponsorships and gifts given to it — or, more disturbingly, if such “gifts” have become a powerful mechanism by which companies are ensuring success in their business dealings with the state.
The Constitutional Court has ruled that it is the right of every South African to have reasonable access to information about political party funding.
In January, President Cyril Ramaphosa signed into law the Political Party Funding Bill, which makes it compulsory for parties to disclose their private funding annually. The Electoral Commission of SA claimed at the time it would take at least six months to put into place the systems that would allow such disclosures, so it appears unlikely that this information will be available to voters before the May elections. There is, however, nothing stopping political parties from volunteering this information to voters right now.
In the case of the ANC, it is crucial it seeks to explain why it continued to accept money from Bosasa. In the absence of a reasonable explanation, voters may well be forced to conclude it has deliberately avoided asking tough questions about the source of its free T-shirts and birthday cakes — because it already knew the answers.