ANC deputy president Paul Mashatile has urged the ANC to consider allowing its members to openly use money to campaign for positions at conferences.
Mashatile said, however, that the party should heavily regulate this by forcing contenders to disclose their funders and allow it to peruse their bank accounts.
He was talking to the Sunday Times on the sidelines of the ANC’s national general council (NGC) in Boksburg, where his performance and that of the cohort of leaders elected at the 2022 Nasrec national conference is being assessed.
He said though NGC was unlikely to make a decision on allowing the use of money on internal campaigns, it was a discussion that could no longer be avoided.
According to Mashatile, contemporary politics across the world goes hand-in-hand with materialism. Though the ANC historically comes from a different ideological view on leadership battles, the party has now been thrust into “realpolitik”, where the use of money cannot be avoided.
Mashatile said this was evident during national and local polls where political formations that do not have adequate funds fail to register their candidates with the Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC).
“Resources and money play a very big role in politics,” he said.
The ANC is confronted with this and could no longer avoid the discussion.
“We were saying in the ANC, and I think that will come soon, that open it up, make it transparent, don’t fight it. Don’t fight the use of money, make it transparent,” said Mashatile.
“Just say, ‘you want to contest to be SG of the ANC? Let’s see who is your funder,’ because we see people wearing T-shirts with your name, where do you get the money? Because inevitably, those contesting have to transport their supporters, have to get material. So what the ANC must do is say: what are the rules.”
The use of money for campaigning was first raised by the ANC’s electoral committee led by former deputy president Kgalema Motlanthe ahead of the 2022 ANC conference.
Motlanthe’s committee came up with rules to guide how contenders can campaign, which included allowing those contesting for top six — now top seven — positions to use their money to arrange public debates.
The electoral committee had also established a set of rules that allowed even those contesting for NEC positions to use money to campaign, though under strict rules such as paying for venues.
The “Motlanthe rules” came as a direct response to the controversy that followed the 2017 ANC conference in which President Cyril Ramaphosa’s campaign came under scrutiny following leaked financial statements of the CR17 campaign, which showed that millions of rand were raised for it.
Mashatile has revived the discussion about the use of money two years before the ANC’s 2027 conference where he is expected to contest to be elected as Ramaphosa’s successor.
The ANC has made it clear that it would not allow any discussions about the succession debate, but Mashatile believes this is one of the issues that have to be concluded before the campaign season starts.
If you say the use of money is a problem (yet you) campaign, you are contradicting yourself because as soon as people campaign, the issue of money kicks in. The supporters are coming, we must book hotels, they must eat, there’s transportation, there are T-shirts and all that. So let’s have rules of campaigning and make it transparent.
— Paul Mashatile, ANC deputy president
“In the report of the electoral committee of comrade Kgalema Motlanthe, they raised this issue of making campaigning transparent. They said, we want to know the budget of those who are contesting, their account details, so that we know where this comrade is getting funding from to avoid a situation of corruption where people are saying ‘maybe they are taking money from irregular tenders.’ So open it up,” said Mashatile.
“If you say the use of money is a problem [yet you] campaign, you are contradicting yourself because as soon as people campaign, the issue of money kicks in. The supporters are coming, we must book hotels, they must eat, there’s transportation, there are T-shirts and all that. So let’s have rules of campaigning and make it transparent.”
Mashatile said the use of money was one of the many tenets that determined ANC leadership.
“Of course, you can’t just say let’s all campaign, but we don’t know where this one comes from. So that is going to be part of it: who are you, what do you stand for, especially in the context of ANC policy, programmes and its history, ethics and integrity. All that is going to count,” he said.
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