PARTY-POLITICAL DONATIONS
IN-DEPTH: Parliament recognises it must get to grips with funding
Since the ANC’s unbanning in 1990, its elective congresses have featured swanky business lounges for captains of industry to gain access to the party’s leadership. In 2015, businessmen paid from R100,000 to R1.5m a seat to attend an ANC gala dinner at which they would have access to President Jacob Zuma. Nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) have long bemoaned SA’s model of political funding as too vague and opaque and have called for greater transparency — to no avail. They argue that there should be regulation of funding in line with AU, UN and other anticorruption codes to which the government is a signatory. In September 2015, My Vote Counts lost its Constitutional Court case in which it tried to compel Parliament to be more robust in making political parties disclose the sources of their private donations. All the political parties in the National Assembly were cited as respondents and none opposed the application; it was only opposed by Parliament.Much has happened since. The A...
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