By: Staff Reporter
On Thursday, the Electoral Commission of SA (IEC) announced that only three political parties had made declarations of donations exceeding the R100 000 threshold for a year.
The African National Congress, Democratic Alliance and ActionSA, made declarations of qualifying donations received from donors with a total value of R 30 million.
“Two represented political parties and one unrepresented political party made declarations of qualifying direct donations. These are the African National Congress (ANC), the Democratic Alliance (DA) and ActionSA. The ANC and the DA declared individual donations received of R10 720 000.00 and R15 983 751.48, respectively. ActionSA declared total direct donations amounting to R 3 305 090.26,” spokesperson Kate Bapela said in a statement.
The IEC said of the submissions received, the DA and ActionSA declared donations in-kind – the total value of which were R 855 685.41. This was made up of R 499 595.15 for the DA and R356 090.26 for ActionSA.
The release was part of the 2021/22 first quarter Party Funding Disclosures Report. The pronouncement was in terms of the Political Party Funding Act 6 of 2018 and its supporting regulations.
This is the first report since the Act’s promulgation, the Commission had six months to issue it publicly.
The Act makes it compulsory for all donations above the R100 000 threshold in a year to be declared. It also restricts the amount a single donor could give an organisation, capped at R15 million per year.
The IEC also revealed that the DA had received donations from two foreign organisations.
“Two foreign entities made direct donations to a political party, the DA, during this period. These donations were compliant with requirements set out in section 8 (4) of the Act, namely, that such donations must only be for the purposes of ‘training or skills development of a member of a political party; or policy development by a political party’. There was no breach or contravention of the Act in this regard detected at this stage,” Bapela said.
She added that the Commission had reminded other parties to submit their declarations, but not all had done so.
“Although not all political parties responded, a significant number of them, especially among the represented parties, reported in writing that they did not receive qualifying donations in the reporting period. Qualifying donations being those above the threshold amount of R100 000,” she said.
