The Institute of Elections Management Services in Africa (IEMSA) has lauded the Political Party Funding Act as one of the most important pieces of legislation that has been passed since the dawn of democracy in 1994.
The IEC has just concluded the first-ever symposium on Political Funding in Durban which was attended by a wide range of stakeholders, including representatives from political parties, members of parliament, academia, civil society, media, the business sector, as well as international and inter-governmental organisations.
The commission’s Chief Executive Officer Sy Mamabolo said that the symposium succeeded in assessing the implementation and impact of the Act since 2021.
“The symposium was convened to foster informed dialogue on matters related to the use of money in politics, promote transparency and accountability models, as well as possible reforms to ensure an effective political finance regulatory regime in South Africa,” said Mamabolo during his address to the symposium.
Meanwhile, IEMSA’s legal advisor Nkululeko Tselane told YOU FM Newshour listeners that the Act must be strengthened to compel both the parties and their donors to disclose their financial support.
“The Act requires that every quarter which means four times a year every political party disclose their funding particularly above the threshold of R100 000 and sets limitations that political parties cannot receive more than R15 million from a single donor within a single financial year.
It’s done a lot, I think it helped a lot with transparency because for a lot of these political parties we must know who is funding them particularly because some of these parties that are represented in both national and provincial legislatures are receiving funds from the state,” explained Tselane.
In addition, Tselane said that although the Act was widely embraced by political parties and other stakeholders there were some discrepancies raised around the disclosure mechanisms.
“Look, there will never be any perfect legislation.
There will always be ways particularly in financial matters that people could perhaps try to circumvent the law.
But we also must balance the interests of donors and political parties with interests of the society.
One of the criticisms of the Act is that some donors don’t want to be known at all, for example if one donor donates to one of the opposition political parties then it may prejudice them and they may not be able to get government work, so they feel they may be victimised for their own personal political views.
So, it’s not perfect but it is certainly a lot better than what it was, because now we know who is getting funding and, we know how much and how much they’re not allowed to get from funders,” remarked Tselane.
IEMSA however highlighted that there seems to be reluctance by some political parties to disclose their funding.
“That’s an interesting question, I mean do the political parties want to disclose their funding in the first place, it’s only them who can truly answer that.
But what we found is that there have been instances where political parties haven’t declared timeously and there’ll be sanctions.
So, the Act then allows the IEC, which is entrusted with the responsibility of implementing the political party funding Act and one of the mechanisms that they have is that they can recover the money if it was not properly disclosed or they can prevent that political party from receiving money from political representative’s fund or multiparty democracy fund,” said Tselane.
He warned that there are sanctions in place if a political party doesn’t comply with the Act and applauded the IEC for holding the parties accountable and compelling them to adhere to the Act.
Tselane lauded the IEC CEO for calling on all stakeholders not to consider the symposium as a burden, “but as an opportunity, a chance to improve a law that touches the very soul of our democratic practice.”
