Funding Act: It will be ‘easier to grab money with less transparency’ – researcher

The amended Bill over political parties’ funding that President Cyril Ramaphosa signed into law despite objections have opened up opportunities for a money grab and deepened secrecy before the general election on 29 May.

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This is a warning by My Vote Counts (MVC) senior researcher Joel Bregman.

“The president has too much power as leader of the country and ruling party. And when it comes to party funding, changes to the law could benefit that party,” said Bregman.

The new Electoral Matters Amendment Bill removes the R15 million annual limit on donations from a single donor and the R100 000 threshold for declaring donations to the Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC).

It was intended to make it mandatory for independent candidates to also declare their funding, but changed the mechanism for allocating funds from the state coffers to members of the national and provincial legislatures to 90% proportionate and 10% equitable, which means the bigger parties will now receive a larger share of the money.

Civil group MVC lodged a court application last year, arguing the Act will make it easier for parties to receive more money from donors, with less transparency.

“This addition to the president’s powers will be part of our court case,” Bregman said.

“The state attorney is aware of the problem that would arise if the commencement date for the Bill is not parallel to the proclamation of limits,” he said.

“Our understanding is that the key limits – the disclosure threshold and the upper limit – will remain unchanged or close to what they are currently. This will avoid the creation of a lacuna in the law.”

But Bregman said this does not deal with the underlying issue in relation to the political party funding, which they believed was unconstitutional.

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Opposition parties, including the Freedom Front Plus, African Christian Democratic Party, Congress of the People and Good Party, petitioned Ramaphosa to refer the substantive amendments in the Bill back to parliament to reestablish the donations limit.

The funding formula changes how represented political parties receive monies from state coffers and signing the Bill into law was “an assault on constitutional democracy”, they said.

The law also undermines a multiparty democracy, Inkatha Freedom Party chief whip Narend Singh said.

“The constitution makes provision for political parties to be funded to promote multiparty democracy,” Singh said.

“We are happy when a third equitable and two-thirds proportionate are fairly shared between the political parties represented in the National Assembly and the provincial legislatures.

“But we want to know why the ANC changed that ratio. It was sneaked in by the ruling party so that they can get more money for the elections at the detriment of smaller parties.

“We are disappointed that the president had not responded to our petition but the opposition parties agreed to seek legal advice to oppose the legislation.”

But political analyst Bernard Sebake said the signing of the law would strengthen accountability from all angles.

“It now reinforces that the declaration should be there to cap some corrupt element, which also raised eyebrows in terms of ethics in the political space and public discourse generally,” he said.