Citizens should know who funds the political parties they vote for to protect against post-election corruption linked to party funding, lobby group My Vote Counts argued in the Constitutional Court on Tuesday. The organisation asked the court to confirm a 2017 finding by the High Court in Cape Town that the Promotion of Access to Information Act (Paia) was inconsistent with the Constitution as it did not require political parties to disclose their private donors. Foreign Government My Vote Counts’s advocate Max du Plessis said citizens donated funds to political parties in the hope that the parties would advance an agenda. Du Plessis said post-election favouritism to companies by a government could only be detected if there was transparency. “We would want to know if a foreign government or a particular family has donated to a political party in order to get preferential treatment. “We would want to know if a potentially corrupt relationship was developing,” he said. Du Plessis also...
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