Political Party Funding Bill to ensure accountability

THE National Council of Provinces is due to begin the process of working on the Political Party Funding Bill in the next few weeks after the approval of the National Assembly. All the parties with the exception of the EFF endorsed the bill after many years of calls by civil society and opposition parties in Parliament. The Council for the Advancement of the South African Constitution (Casac) yesterday also said the bill was a step in the right direction to ensure accountability and transparency.

My Vote Counts, an NGO, had also taken Parliament to court to force parties to declare their funders. Speaker Baleka Mbete had called for the approval of the bill before the elections in 2019.

The bill sets a cap of R15 million per donation to a party per donor per year. Foreign donors can donate R5m a year to a party.

However, the bill prevents foreign governments to make any donation to parties.

The now defunct Institute for Democracy in South Africa had since the early 2000s been fighting in the courts to force parties to declare their funders but lost. The ANC has been opposed to the idea for many years and it opened up to it only last year. Parties are allocated funds by the IEC and Parliament based on proportional representation, but private funding has never been declared.

Lawson Naidoo of Casac said: “It’s a step in the right direction because setting a formula for the funding of parties is an improvement for smaller parties.

“This is one of the most important pieces of legislation that would allow for transparency. We need to make sure that funding for parties is transparent. If voters are to cast their vote they need to know who is funding their party. We know in the world clandestine funding is used for nefarious purposes and corruption.”

He said the bill would prevent all of that. This is also the argument used by My Vote Counts in the courts – voters wanted to know the funders of their parties to prevent corruption.

Naidoo said funders could go to a party with an intention to be involved in corrupt activities and the bill would seek to ensure that this does not happen.

“It creates a framework but there is a lot of work to be done for monitoring and the IEC needs more capacity,” said Naidoo.

The funding of the parties by the IEC was skewed for many years, but now a portion of it will be on an equitable basis.

During the local government elections in 2016 parties spent hundreds of millions in the campaign.

Former ANC head of campaigns Nomvula Mokonyane told journalists in Cape Town in 2016 that the party spent more than R1 billion in the local government election campaign.

This was

ANC.

The DA was said to have spent more than R200 million. It also dismissed the figure.

The EFF said it had spent R20m. disputed by the