ANC doing fine, neither rich nor broke: Mkhize

The ANC is not rich but at the same time is not struggling financially, treasurer general Zweli Mkhize said on Tuesday.

"We are doing fine, we are not an organisation that will be reflecting a surplus like your mining companies, we are not that type of organisation," he told Sapa in an interview.

"The ANC is not a rich organisation but it's also not broke."

Mkhize said the African National Congress ran a tight ship financially and was responsible with the donations it received.

According to the party's financial report, tabled at its national executive committee meeting and which was leaked to the Mail & Guardian last week, the party spent R429 million on its election campaign this year.

The paper reported that the ANC still owed R31m, with 16 creditors waiting for their money.

Mkhize on Tuesday confirmed the party spent R429m on the elections, but said this was not a strange phenomenon.

The ANC was a social movement with 5000 branches, which made it a costly operation. But those were the structures that earned the party 11 million votes, he said.

"Elections have increasingly been getting more expensive over the years. But in general terms I believe South African expenditure on elections is much less than what you see in other countries."

Mkhize said the amount spent on this year's election was more than previously, but put this down to a "changing landscape" in the past five years.

"The election platform is very diverse. There are lots of issues, lots of requirements. The ANC does its own research and structures its programmes according to that."

Mkhize said the ANC had agreements with its creditors and was paying the money still owed.

"Whoever we owe we sort them out... there is not like there is some huge storm to grip South Africa because the ANC is running out of money. It's not the case."

However, he admitted that the ANC should make its finances public, insisting the party had nothing to hide.

"We are also not correct because we [are] not sharing this with the public. The ANC finances are not a secret."

When the ANC accounted to its members and shared its financial reports with them, it was not obliged to share this information with the public.

"The ANC is serious about transparency so we do it, and we account for the donations, we account for the expenditure. We account for everything."

Mkhize said the party was discussing publicly releasing its financial reports in future.

"There's nothing wrong here or illegal."

By releasing the report Mkhize believed it would expel any suspicion that the party was doing anything underhand.

"It is important for the public to have a sense of the scale of resources the party like the ANC requires," he said.

The ANC was discussing how to increase public funding for political parties and regulating and ensuring there was accountability on private donations.

He insisted the ANC knew who its donors were and said the party would not accept money from dubious characters.