Only ANC & DA declared donations in the latest declarations — IEC

The ANC and the DA are the only two political parties that made declarations of donations received for the fourth quarter of the 2021/22 financial year — January to March 2022.

The ANC declared R10m, while the DA declared R2,525,387.72. The DA also declared an in-kind donation of R786,152.81 from the Friedrich Naumann Foundation (FNF), a German foundation.

The IEC is yet to publish the full Party Funding Fourth Quarter Disclosure Report with details of the donors and their donations. A press statement issued on Monday does not name the ANC donors, but the IEC indicated it will publish the full report later on Monday.

The electoral commission said all of the DA’s declared donations except for one were received from foreign donors — the FNF and Danish Liberal Democracy Programme (DLDP).

The combined value of these foreign donations is R2,405,387.72, constituting 95% of the total value of donations declared by the DA during the fourth quarter.

Of this amount, the FNF donated R1,713,250.80 and the DLDP R692,136.92.

“Considering that each of these foreign donors have made repeated donations to one political party (DA), the commission has found it necessary to consider the cumulative value of all donations over the financial year under review.

“The commission can therefore confirm that all the foreign donations declared by the DA were fully compliant with the act in that they fall within the R5m ceiling per donor. Furthermore, the donated funds were used for activities falling within the ambit of the law — namely, policy development, training and skills development of members of the political party,” said the IEC.

Chief electoral officer Sy Mamabolo said the fourth quarter declarations were by far the least, both in terms of value of donations and the number of parties making declarations.

For the first time, only two political parties made declarations and the total value of donations was below R30m, which was until now the smallest amount declared in a quarter.

“Noting that the fourth-quarter disclosure period was immediately after the local government elections, it appears that there is a nexus between the number and total value of donations and the election cycle. The more imminent the elections, the more likely that parties will receive significant donations,” said Mamabolo.

“Another emerging feature of the party funding disclosure regime is that political parties with the highest representation in the national and provincial legislatures appear more likely to receive donations regularly than those with lower representation. The ANC and the DA are typical in this regard.”

The IEC said that in the period under review, it received a contribution of R5,000 into the multiparty democracy fund (MPDF). The amount was received from a Mr Ivan Pillay, a member of the public, on March 29.

The Political Party Funding Act establishes the MPDF to raise and distribute donated funds from the private sector to represented political parties.

The Electoral Commission is mandated to administer the fund, including to raise funds for the MPDF from corporate and private donors and to distribute these funds to parties represented in the national and provincial legislatures.

The IEC noted that the first financial year since the implementation of the Party Funding Act was concluded at the end of March. This means political parties will now be required to submit audited annual financial statements to the commission. Political parties have three months from the end of the financial year to submit their annual financial statements to their appointed independent auditors.

The auditors are provided a further three months, July to September, to audit the submitted annual financial statements which will then, accompanied by the auditor’s opinion, be submitted by the political party’s accounting officer to the commission by September 30.

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