The R15m limit set as the highest amount an entity or individual can donate to a political party annually is “excessive” and needs to be lowered, a civil society organisation argued at the Western Cape High Court on Monday.
My Vote Counts (MVC) wants the court to declare the Political Party Funding Act unconstitutional because “it fails to require a political party to disclose all private donations received by it”. It wants the threshold for disclosure to be scrapped.
The organisation pinned the battle over the act’s provision that parties are bound to disclose donations starting from R100,000. They do not have to disclose donations of less than R100,000.
The threshold limits the public’s right to access information on private funding of political parties, the organisation argued in court.
“The constitutional imperatives dictate that all donations must be disclosed. Such a threshold is not constitutionally permissible and defeats the purpose of disclosure,” an affidavit of the organisation’s director Minhaj Jeenah said.
Jeenah told the high court the threshold caused the act to “fail to safeguard against the threat of corruption and ultimately state capture and in fact leaves the door open for such corruption”.
He said because of the threshold, many political parties do not disclose funding. “Only 12 out of 1,540 political parties disclosed any donations since 2021.”
My Vote Counts also wants parliament to lower the R15m set as the highest amount that an entity or individual can donate to a political party.
“The R15m is excessively and unjustifiably high, which fails to mitigate the risk of rendering political parties bandaged to the dictates of private parties,” the organisation said.
The DA, opposing the application, argued in court that operations of a political party were “expensive”.
DA federal finance chair and minister of forestry, fisheries & the environment Dion George in court papers said My Vote Counts painted private donations to parties as “evil”.
“The reality is that running a political party in a modern democracy is very expensive,” he said.
“Without private money, political parties in SA will not have the funds they need to fulfil their functions. The amendments MVC seeks will reduce the private money political parties receive, without furthering any other legitimate end. Rather than furthering democracy, MVC’s pet amendments will undermine it.”
In court papers the party detailed spending R391m in 2022 and R297m in 2021.
“The DA spent around R550m on campaigning for 2019 national and provincial elections.”
George was confident the act approved by parliament was “balanced”.
“MVC treats the rights of voters as trumps over all other rights,” he said.
“The arrangement parliament has chosen, balances voters’ right of access to information on the one hand, the rights of donors and political parties to privacy and free association, and the right of donors to freedom of expression.”
Home affairs minister Leon Schreiber, as the executive member responsible for the act, also opposed the application, which he described as unrealistic.
“My Vote Counts’ case is wide-ranging and is overambitious. Having established the constitutional principle that parties must disclose private funding (in previous litigation), My Vote Counts now wishes [that] parliament adopts its specifically preferred policy choices.”
He said the organisation’s goal was to limit and ultimately abolish the ability of political parties and independent candidates to raise funding from private sources.
“Parties simply need money from the public and private sectors to operate. This is amply demonstrated by the affidavits filed by the DA, the EFF and ActionSA.”
He argued the organisation had not demonstrated that provisions of the act violate the constitution.
My Vote Counts also argued that the act gives President Cyril Ramaphosa power to determine donation limits, which is problematic and creates room for corruption because he too is a leader of a political party.
The organisation said the ANC indicated it had the intention to increase the disclosure threshold to R500,000 per donation.
Presidency legal adviser Geofrey Mphaphuli in court papers said the president’s powers were guided by parliament.
“The president’s powers to make regulations to prescribe these matters are circumscribed by the act. He can only do so by ‘acting on a resolution’ of the National Assembly. Many of the complaints by My Vote Counts in this case about the president’s power to determine these matters are unsustainable.”
He described the application as “premature” saying parliament was deliberating on the issues raised by the organisation.
“[As] the National Assembly is due to act to enable the president to promulgate new regulations on the threshold, the relief sought by My Vote Counts in this regard may be premature.”
ActionSA argued the relief to have more donations disclosed would result in an administrative nightmare.
“The requirement of collecting multiple data points for every donation (irrespective of whether this is R1 to R99,999.99), and every person or entity that makes such a donation, is incredibly burdensome for the political party concerned as well as the IEC (the latter already being under administrative pressure due to a lack of resources).”
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