SA is none the wiser about who really funds politics

SA’s voters will elect political representatives in the upcoming local government polls all but oblivious as to how parties vying for their support are funded. Last week, the Electoral Commission of SA (IEC) tabled its first report on private donations to political parties. Overall it was a fail, though it did reveal key sources of private funds for the two main parties. Only three political parties — the ANC, DA and Herman Mashaba’s ActionSA — of the more than 500 registered with the IEC declared their donors. Disclosures are only required by law when a private funder makes a donation of R100,000 or more.

Private donors may not send a party more than R15m in one year, which is exactly how much Mary Oppenheimer-Slack, a scion of the mining dynasty, donated to the DA in the single largest donation to any of the three parties. Perhaps DA leader John Steenhuisen is ruing the rules since, without the constraints, Oppenheimer-Slack might have been even more generous.

While the DA’s largest funder was an individual, the ANC’s two largest donors were companies in which the party’s investment company, Chancellor House, holds stakes. The governing party recorded R10.7m in direct pledges. ActionSA’s total was R3.3m. Durban-born IT entrepreneur and patent mogul Martin Moshal, who recently made headlines in the UK, gave it R2.5m.

The trio’s disclosures of private income from April to June is the first disclosure since the Political Party Funding Act came into effect on April 1. When the law was passed, it was praised as heralding a new era of transparency. Gaping holes in the report are unlikely to inspire public confidence in the IEC’s powers of implementation.

In January, President Cyril Ramaphosa touted the new rules as “part of the commitment of this administration to improving transparency and accountability in government”. He said implementing the act would strengthen democracy and “have far-reaching consequences for good governance and ethical political activity”. Fast-forward to September 9 when the primary report stemming from the legislation was released. The document the IEC published last Thursday ran to all of three pages. The vast majority of elected political parties — including the EFF, IFP, FF+, ACDP and UDM — did not disclose.

It is bitter fruit that the opposition failed to step up, particularly given the EFF’s fierce pursuit of the books for the CR17 campaign for Ramaphosa to run the ANC, and the image UDM leader Bantu Holomisa has fostered as an anti-corruption crusader. According to the IEC, most of the parties that did not disclose said their individual contributions did not reach the R100,000 qualifying threshold. Others simply ignored the regulatory body.

Those seeking to win the confidence of the public might have taken advantage of the opportunity to disclose funders, even below the cap. This would have shown regard for the principle of transparency at the root of the law politicians themselves endorsed in parliament.

Only one person donated to the multiparty democracy fund (MPDF), which is a grand idea that may pick up pace even if it started as a flop. The MPDF allows donors to place funds in a pot for division among represented parties according to a formula. Until the MPDF’s total reaches at least R1m, the funds will stay put. So far it has all of R2,000.

All this means millions of South Africans will mark their ballots barely any wiser as to who bankrolls the political parties listed, after the IEC’s anticlimactic first report on party donations. With capacity and will, however, the IEC can ensure the next quarterly report is distinct. An insightful and revealing report will list what funds reached parties’ coffers during the three months (July to September) preceding local government elections. By then any complaints of prior nondisclosure should have been assessed, with the appropriate penalties meted.

Nobody possibly believes that R30m was all that private benefactors donated to political parties, least of all in the same year as local government elections. This bare secrecy undermines the credibility of SA’s democracy.

WITH CAPACITY AND WILL, HOWEVER, THE IEC CAN ENSURE THE NEXT QUARTERLY REPORT IS DISTINCT