Political Funding Act monitoring ‘crucial’

CIVIL society organisations that have been at the forefront in the fight for the Political Funding Act believe its biggest test will be the strength in monitoring and its implementation by the Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC).

The act was signed into operation by President Cyril Ramaphosa last year, but he recently announced its commencement day as April 1.

The IEC has had to set up a mechanism of conducting its new powers and administrative duties in ensuring the act is adhered to.

The act will see the establishment of the multi-party democracy fund which will receive money from private donations, in or outside the country.

The disclosure part of the act will require political parties to disclose to the IEC donations above R100 000 and limited to R15 million in a financial year.

The responsibility for disclosure will also lie with the donor as they will also need to disclose these donations to the IEC.

The IEC will need to publish information on the donations quarterly to Parliament and on a publicly accessible website.

In a webinar hosted this week on by My Vote Counts, there was wide-ranging agreement from analysts that civil society played an important role in making the act a reality.

Noxolo Gwala, the programme director at the Institute for Sustainable Democracy in Africa, said the passing of the law was not the biggest achievement. She said the biggest test was whether monitoring of its implementation would be strong.

Gwala said strong monitoring of compliance could help spur behavioural change from political parties.

Although the act limits the type of donations foreign donors can make to political parties, Gwala said there remained room for interference and influence especially as foreign donors would be allowed to make donations to training and skills programmes.

“There is no way of tracking if that will not be used to direct policy interests of political parties,” Gwala said.

On whether there had been fear among political parties about the introduction of the act, political analyst Ralph Mathekga said the fear had been equally distributed across political parties. He said there were so many unknowns ahead and this was a perfect environment to breed unease.

Mathekga said the act would be the bridge that strengthens the relationship between political parties and the electorate.

Head of political funding at the IEC George Mahlangu said the organisation remained optimistic that parties would comply with the act.