Citizens have the right to know political funders to root out corruption

Citizens should know who funds the political parties they vote for in order to protect against post-election corruption linked to party funding.

This is one of the arguments presented by My Vote Counts‚ a non-profit organisation‚ before the Constitutional Court on Tuesday.

The organisation has asked the court to confirm a Cape Town High Court order passed last year‚ which declared that the Promotion of Access to Information Act (PAIA) was inconsistent with the constitution as it does not require political parties to disclose their private donors.

My Vote Counts advocate Max du Plessis said on Tuesday citizens donated to political parties in the hope that the parties would advance a certain agenda.

Du Plessis said post-election favouritism to companies by a government could only be detected if there was transparency.

“We would want to know if a foreign government or a particular family has donated to a political party in order to get preferential treatment. We would want to know if a potentially corrupt relationship was developing‚” Du Plessis said.

Du Plessis also said there were problems with PAIA as it only referred to the release of recorded information‚ thus excluding unrecorded conversations and agreements.

Du Plessis said a donor could allow a political party the use of its stadium and this would not be recorded. He said such unrecorded donations cannot be accessed through PAIA. He also said the Act did not make provision for access to information from foreign donors.

The Minister of Justice is opposing the application.