The Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) welcomes the President’s announcement that the long-delayed Political Party Funding (PPF) Act will finally come into effect on 1 April 2020. This is long overdue and will be a welcome boost in the fight against the festival of corruption threatening the very fabric of our nation.
The PPF Act requires political parties to account for donations over R100 000 to the Independent Electoral Commission and the public. It sets limits on how much individuals and corporations can donate to parties. It criminalises donations by domestic and foreign state entities to parties. These will be critical to begin eradicating the scourge of corruption and the abuse of public funds from our political party landscape if implemented in full.
The Federation had long called for this Act to come into effect. Its commencement from 1 April is important as political parties’ fundraising before the 2021 local government elections can then be held to scrutiny.
We hope that those recalcitrant politicians in not only the ANC but also some of the opposition parties will abandon their shameless attempts to stop the Act and have it sent back to Parliament to have its anti-corruption, transparency and accountability clauses gutted. If anything, Parliament should develop the moral courage to strengthen those clauses by requiring parties to account for all donations and placing tighter caps on corporate donations.
The Act provides for increased public funding of political parties through the fiscus. This needs to be put on hold until the public fiscal crises are dealt with. Workers will not accept increased public funding to the very political parties that have imposed a 4-year wage freeze on health and other public workers retrenched SOE workers, failed to pay municipal workers, and run the state into the ground with their political vandalism, mismanagement, and lust for corruption.
For further information please contact: Matthew Parks- Parliamentary Coordinator
Cell: 082 785 0687
Email: matthew@cosatu.org.za