Most parties ignore rules on donations
Funding still shrouded in secrecy, with only ANC, DA and ActionSA disclosing their donors
In apparent disregard for the law meant to herald a new era of transparency in political party funding, the majority of parties have neglected to disclose their financial backers.
An inaugural party funding report from the Electoral Commission of SA (IEC) showed only three parties the ANC, main opposition DA and Herman Mashaba’s ActionSA met the legal requirement to disclose direct donations and offers of goods and services of more than R100,000. The report follows ground-breaking legal reform on party funding which came into effect in April.
Overall, only three out of 504 parties registered with the IEC disclosed direct pledges, with 393 parties ignoring the directive completely, while another 108 said they had not received funds from single donors that met the bar for disclosure.
This means private funding for SA’s politics remains shrouded in secrecy, despite the passage of the Political Party Funding Act.
According to the data released on Thursday, the ANC received R10.7m in direct donations for the first quarter of the 2021/2022 financial year, while the DA came out top with a declaration of just under R16m. ActionSA announced R3.3m in direct donations.
The EFF, which has 44 seats in the National Assembly, the IFP and the African Christian Democratic Party opted out.
Among the more eyecatching donors was Mary Oppenheimer-Slack, a scion of the mining dynasty who chairs the Oppenheimer Memorial Fund. She donated R15m to the DA, which accounts for the largest portion of the R15.98m it declared. A mining company, United Manganese of the Kalahari, established in 2005, donated R5m to the ANC.
Durban-born businessperson Martin Moshal, an IT entrepreneur turned venture capitalist, is the single biggest direct funder for ActionSA. Moshal, who made headlines in the UK for his association with gambling company Betway, gave R2.5m to Mashaba’s party. A former mayor of Johannesburg, Mashaba founded ActionSA after his acrimonious break with the DA in late 2019. His cosmetics business Black Like Me is another ActionSA donor.
The IEC’s vice-chair, Janet
Love, introduced the report less than two months before SA holds municipal elections.
While the governing party provided a round figure for direct donations, it skipped any disclosure of donations in kind. These are pledges of goods and services, not money.
The DA recorded donations in kind worth almost R500,000 while ActionSA disclosed more than R350,000 such pledges.
The few disclosures follow parliament’s passing the law to ensure party funding is transparent, and what little has been disclosed so far is likely to raise questions about the efficacy of the legislation.
Regulations that accompany the new funding act cite penalties for those who give false information, misleading disclosures and fraudulent declarations. Consequences include fines of up to R500,000, two years in prison, or both.
According to commissioner Nomsa Masuku the IEC would only take action on receiving complaints against parties over specific undeclared donations above R100,000, in which case the IEC would remind the party to disclose.
“The action that the commission will take is to communicate, you know, to those political parties around a requirement of declaration,” Masuku said.
SA government departments, state-owned enterprises, foreign governments and foreign agencies are outlawed from making donations to parties.
According to the act, however, pledges from a single foreign donor, excluding governments and agencies, may not exceed R15m in a single year. Love said the DA received two donations from foreign donors, but did not list their value.
The new party funding law led to the creation of the MultiParty Democracy Fund (MPDF) to which companies and members of the public can donate funds for disbursement among parties in national and provincial legislatures according to a formula. Only one person has done so, contributing R2,000.
According to Love, the MPDF’s funds are only disbursed when donations exceed R1m. “The sustainability of the Multi-Party Democracy Fund is a critical step towards a healthy democracy,” she said.