ANC alliance partner Cosatu is putting pressure on President Cyril Ramaphosa to ensure the implementation of legislation enacted to help fight corruption, warning that delays would lead to a constitutional crisis.
Cosatu was the first ANC-aligned structure to endorse Ramaphosa as president of the ANC, and is a critical part of the ruling party’s election machinery as it helps to mobilise voters. The Political Party Funding Act is one of the pieces of legislation over which Cosatu has raised concerns, because despite having become law in January 2019 it has not yet been implemented.
The act is ensures that political parties and their donors will have to disclose donations of more than R100,000. Political party funding has been exposed as a breeding ground for corruption in SA, in which donations in some cases are allegedly made in return for lucrative state contracts.
In an interview on Monday, Cosatu’s parliamentary coordinator Matthew Parks said the federation will raise the delays in a letter to the president. The union federation will also raise the issue during the upcoming tripartite alliance meetings of the ANC, Cosatu and the SA Communist Party.
He said Cosatu will also be raising the issue with parliament and increase public pressure on it. Parks warned that the government could be taken to court for delaying the implementation of the legislation, as it cannot merely ignore laws passed by parliament.
The labour federation’s central executive committee met last week and raised concerns over the “increasing tendency by the president and his executive towards undermining parliament”. Parliament has passed several important bills only for the presidency to “simply ignore” them or for departments to indefinitely delay their implementation, the central executive committee said in a statement.
“This will lead us to a constitutional crisis. If the president does not want to sign a bill, he must refer it back to parliament. But he can only do so if the bill is unconstitutional or the public participation processes were undermined,” it said.
The statement specifically raised the Public Investment Corporation Amendment Bill, which was passed by parliament in March 2019 and has still not been signed. The bill is aimed at strengthening the corporate governance, accountability and transparency of Africa’s largest asset manager.
The Political Party Funding Act, which has been signed into law, has in turn not been given a commencement date. “We are now approaching local elections. The government cannot be allowed to continue to undermine parliament.
“The presidency must move with speed to the signing, enacting and implementation of legislation. Lethargy is not a virtue,” Cosatu’s central executive committee said.
While the lack of a commencement date for the legislation is a major issue, home affairs minister Aaron Motsoaledi wrote to parliament in October to raise another. He asked the National Assembly to reconsider one of the items in the presidential regulations made in terms of the funding act, his spokesperson Siya Qoza said on Monday.
The regulation deals with administering and managing the Multi-Party Democracy Fund, which raises and distributes donated funds from the private sector to represented political parties. The Electoral Commission of SA has said it is ready to implement the act.
Suggestions that the act should be amended before it is even implemented, made in comments by ANC treasurer-general Paul Mashatile, “shows a very worrying stance by the ruling party in government towards corruption and towards respect for parliament”, Parks said.
In an interview with the Sunday Times, Mashatile said in its current form the act is a threat to the survival of political parties in parliament. Parks said the ANC’s financial crises are well-known, and it is looking for ways to get donations without having to disclose them.
“And I think they are trying to kick the can down the road because the local elections are around the corner and those are very expensive exercises,” he said.
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