EDITORIAL: The Ezulwini mystery

On December 2 last year, a truck parked outside the ANC’s headquarters at Chief Albert Luthuli House in Johannesburg. It belonged to the sheriff and it was there to remove items attached in an order of the high court handed down in favour of Ezulwini Investments, a company that said it had not been paid for printing 30,000 posters for the 2019 election campaign.

This came after the governing party had tried and failed to overturn the order in the Supreme Court of Appeal.

Just before Christmas, and despite the dispute rolling on since 2019, the matter was abruptly settled out of court. This was no doubt good for Ezulwini Investments, given that the outstanding sum was R102m with interest.

The ANC’s financial problems have been ongoing for some time, with the party failing to pay salaries as recently as 2022. To be clear, it is understood that the ANC has complied with the Political Party Funding Act.

But given the historically shaky financial position of the party and the fact that recently declared donations, while large, do not come close to the sum required to settle the Ezulwini debt, it would be an act of democratic transparency and constitutional leadership for the ANC to show where it got the money to settle the debt in advance of the required declaration date — and the election.