Durban - DA leader contender Wilmot James’s challenge to his rival, Mmusi Maimane, the party’s parliamentary leader, to publicly disclose how much he is spending on the race for top party post, has been dismissed as a publicity stunt.
James on Wednesday revealed he had already spent R75 311.64 of the R100 000 he’s set aside from his own pocket on campaign materials, travel and accommodation. To date he had not received any donations, but once these came in, they would be publicly declared.
“I challenge Athol Trollip (the DA Eastern Cape leader running for party chairman) and Mmusi Maimane in the interests of transparency to make public the name/s of each donor and the amounts donated, whether the donation was in cash or kind, and (to) make public a breakdown of their campaign expenses no later than Sunday May 3, 2015,” James said.
Maimane said donations to his campaign were made in the understanding these would be declared to the party as required by the rules as the vote for DA leadership positions was one by party members only.
“These are Mamphela Ramphele tendencies,” he quipped, in a reference to talk during the short-lived pre-2014 election merger between the DA and AgangSA that Ramphele would bring money to the party.
Trollip told the Daily News he saw “no reason to comply with another contestant’s challenges”. He added that he had complied with the DA’s funding disclosures for party elections as he has done in the contests fought over the past 20 years.
Campaigning for DA leadership posts is serious business. Candidates campaign, lobby, do polls and get endorsements.
Candidates dig into their own pockets, and raise funds, to travel across the country and to print T-shirts, posters and such. Any funds, or donations in kind, are declared to the party, which keeps records to ensure candidates’ donations do not come from the usual donors to DA coffers.
There are less than two weeks to go before the DA federal congress in Nelson Mandela Bay on the weekend of May 9. Both campaigns by James and Maimane claim they have sufficient support across provinces.
However, Maimane has received public endorsement by newly elected Western Cape leader Patricia de Lille, and 144 Gauteng representatives, representing about a third of that province’s congress delegates.
Maimane’s campaign manager, Geordin Hill-Lewis said “some of our donors have asked for confidentiality, and we will honour that”.
Daily News