Advocacy NGO My Vote Counts (MVC) argues that President Cyril Ramaphosa’s recent proclamation to double the disclosure threshold and annual donation limit in the Political Funding Act (PFA) will increase secrecy in political funding and make it easier for private interests to unduly influence South Africa’s politics.
The proclamation, published on Monday, 18 August in the Government Gazette, raises the annual donation limit from R15 million to R30 million and increases the disclosure threshold from R100,000 to R200,000.
MVC warned these changes “will deepen secrecy in political funding and make it easier for private interests to influence our politics and for corruption to occur.”
While recognising the importance of funding for political parties in a democracy, MVC emphasised the need to balance adequate funding with transparency and safeguards against undue influence.
The NGO said the decision to increase the limits “does not strike such a balance” and called it “a politically expedient power grab that diminishes our ability to exercise constitutional rights, namely, our political rights (section 19) and our right of access to information (section 32).”
By doubling the disclosure threshold, MVC said, “the details of all donations under R200,000 will not be known to the public. This is an enormous sum for most South Africans and donations of such amounts should be made public knowledge to facilitate scrutiny of parties’ relationships with donors and ensure that donors are not receiving anything in return.”
The State, MVC added, “has never provided a legitimate reason why all donations should not be disclosed to the public.”
Drawing from four years of disclosure data, MVC revealed “a handful of wealthy individuals dominate our private political funding landscape.”
”Doubling the amount a donor can donate to a party in a year to R30m will give donors an even greater ability to have an outsized influence on our political system. It will also make parties more susceptible to undue influence. And because the law does not regulate donations from related parties through the different legal entities they control, wealthy donors can now have an even more significant impact.”
The NGO also criticised the law for failing to regulate donations from related parties through different legal entities, allowing wealthy donors to multiply their impact.
MVC had hoped Parliament would use the opportunity to review the limits based on context-specific evidence.
”When the opportunity arose, My Vote Counts (MVC) was hopeful that Parliament would remedy the limits to make them fit for the South African context. This is an issue that MVC has long argued – that the original limits adopted in 2021 were not only too high, but had been adopted without due regard to empirical evidence and were therefore irrational and unlawful.”
However, MVC criticised Parliament for ignoring this research. “Instead of taking the time to do the actual work of developing limits that are fit for South Africa,” the Portfolio Committee on Home Affairs and the National Assembly “decided to reject and ignore the research,” basing amendments on flawed original limits.
Led by the ANC, MVC said most political parties favored “less oversight and fewer restrictions on donations from wealthy donors, regardless of the consequences for democracy, and for transparency and accountability.”
MVC said it is currently challenging the constitutionality of the PFA in the Western Cape High Court.
The case argues that the original limits were “irrational and unlawful” due to lack of empirical basis, and challenges the President’s power to set the limits, which “places too much power in a conflicted officeholder.”
MVC noted that a judgment is pending, and a successful ruling could set aside the new amendments retrospectively.
MVC called the recent proclamation “a setback for our democracy” but vowed to continue advocating and litigating to ensure the PFA “is constitutional and upholds the principles of transparency and accountability.”
The NGO said they will also request the President to release “the reasons and full record of factors that were considered as he applied his mind to this matter.”
“We cannot allow those in power to jeopardise our democracy and water down constitutionally protected rights for their narrow, self-serving interests,” said MVC.
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