ActionSA not pleased with IEC over funding

ActionSA leader Herman Mashaba. Picture: Itumeleng English/African News Agency (ANA)

ActionSA leader Herman Mashaba. Picture: Itumeleng English/African News Agency (ANA)

Published Jun 22, 2021

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Johannesburg - ActionSA says it plans to take the IEC to court over possible unconstitutional fund-raising of donor funding towards the Multi-Party Democracy Fund – which falls under the newly enacted Political Funding Act.

The party said it would possibly launch a court application before the local government elections in October.

The Political Funding Act came into effect in April.

The act allows for the creation of two funds that will see monies donated being disbursed to represented parties. One of them is the Multi-Party Democracy Fund (MPDF) which ActionSA is contesting.

The party, because it is yet to hold any legislative seat, will not benefit from any of the funding disbursed by the IEC.

The IEC said the MPDF was meant to attract donors of any kind who were interested in investing in democracy.

ActionSA’s Michael Beaumont yesterday said the IEC had misrepresented its understanding of the fund. The party believes the IEC has acted unconstitutionally in approaching donors on behalf of the fund.

Beaumont said the IEC’s role as stipulated in the act, shows that it can only play an administrative role and not a fund-raising role.

“Our primary focus right now is the IEC has no legislative role in fund-raising for this fund. The terms of the act talk about manage and administer.

They are deducing from that they have a mandate to fund-raise and administer, our view is that if the legislatures wanted you to fund-raise they would have been clear on that part,“ he said.

“Our issue is that they are acting outside their powers. They are contravening the constitutional power to run free and fair elections,” Beaumont said.

The first disbursement from the MPDF was expected in July, Beaumont said. He said what worried the party was an uneven playing field before the elections.

The party plans to approach the court by the end of July and this would be dependent on the urgency of the matter.

Beaumont said he had been told the fund had little funds collected at the moment and that the IEC was expecting a R5 million donation towards it soon.

“Whether it is R10 000 or R20 000 we contend that the IEC should not be fund-raising."

The IEC said on Monday that it was aware of ActionSA’s complaint. The commission said: “The Multi-Party Democracy Fund is provided for in the act and its primary purpose is to support multi-party democracy. The MPDF contributions are not donations directly to political parties, but rather contributions intended to strengthen multi-party democracy.”

Meanwhile, the Electoral Commission has invited public comments on the proposed rates of election deposits for the upcoming elections.

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Political Bureau