Political Party Funding Act will promote multiparty democracy

23 January 2019

The FF Plus believes that President Cyril Ramaphosa did the right thing by signing the Political Party Funding Act and that it is something that should have been done a long time ago seeing as the Bill has been lying on the President's desk since July last year.

The Act will ensure a fairer distribution of tax payers' money which, in terms of Section 236 of the Constitution, must be made available to political parties that are represented in Parliament so as to promote multiparty democracy.

The FF Plus has always been in favour of disclosing donations to political parties so that voters can see who funds the various parties and in particular the government of the day as it will make it easier to determine who might possibly benefit from state contracts. Transparency will limit irregularities to a great degree.

The Act stipulates that all donations to political parties that exceed R100 000 must be disclosed and that donations from foreign institutions and/or governments are no longer permissible.

In December last year, the FF Plus started asking why the presidency does not want to sign the Act and the suspicion was that signing the Act may in some way be detrimental to the ANC.

A typical example of why this may be the case is that at the ANC's manifesto launch, guests had to pay a whopping R500 000 just to sit at the same table as the President. If the Act had already been signed at that time, the names of each of those donors would have had to be disclosed.

By keeping the pressure on, the FF Plus made sure that the Act would be signed into law and now that it finally is it will surely serve to promote a multiparty democracy.

Issued by Pieter Groenewald, FF Plus leader, 23 January 2019