Lobby group My Vote Counts has launched a bid in the Western Cape High Court to have the Political Party Funding Act 2021 be declared invalid. The organisation is seeking greater transparency in the legislation that deals with private funding of political parties.
Speaking in an interview on Salaamedia, Sheilan Clarke, the head of communications at My Vote Counts, said there were at least four flaws in the Act. She said at least one of those – the R100 000 disclosure threshold – defeated the purpose of the law.
“We’ve had this for the last two years, but what we’ve been seeing with disclosures is that this legislation does need some fine-tuning in order for it to be an effective piece of legislation,” she said.
This comes as the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) revealed in its latest report that some 500 political parties failed to disclose their financial records. This week, the Commission called for parties to submit audited financial statements.
SMread: A threat to free speech and deocracy
Flaws
Clarke explained there were at least four aspects of the Act that needed to be amended in order for the Act to be effective. These were the threshold, a donation ceiling, lack of expenditure disclosures and the possibility of multiple donations through proxies.
“Right now, political parties want to amend the piece of legislation to make it less effective. What we are arguing is we want to make it even more effective,” she said.
At present, political parties are only required to disclose private donations exceeding R100 000. “Having this disclosure threshold defeats the purpose of disclosure and thus defeats the purpose of the Act. We want this to be scrapped, parties want this to be increased,” she said.
On the issue of the R15 million private donation limit, Clarke said, “That is extremely high because what we’ve seen in the disclosures is that this then allows political parties to be heavily reliant on single large donors”.
Thirdly, she added, “We’re also saying all expenditure of all private donations, whether R10 000 or R1000, needs to be disclosed because anybody can be influenced below R100 000. There’s no evidence that suggests that it’s only donations above R100 000 that can influence [policies]”.
The fourth and final aspect was the loophole for private donors to make multiple donations, exceeding the R15 million mark, via proxies.
