In almost all previous elections, corporate South Africa has come to the party. Or at least contributed to the party. This time, it’s different.

During the current election campaign, political parties have been asked the obvious question: Which companies or individuals have contributed financially to their campaign?

The question is particularly poignant now because SA is about to implement new legislation on the issue, the Political Party Funding Act. The legislation will force parties to fess up who has been dishing out the boodle, something that has intrigued South Africans for ages.

The legislation was originally supposed to apply to the current election. Unfortunately — or, if you are a cynic, inevitably — the legislation was put on hold by the Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) because, we are given to believe, so many comments were made (about 5,000) that the organisation was not able to process the suggestions in time.

That is a transparent ruse. This is an act of Parliament; not a suggested legislative intervention that might be affected by public intervention. Theoretically, the public consultations have been done and dusted, although in fairness, the suggestions were aimed at the regulations the IEC was supposed to put in place. But nevertheless, those should not have affected the central intention of the legislature.

And that intention was pretty clear and obvious. The legislation says all donations above R100,000 have to be reported to the IEC, which will release this information quarterly. Foreign organisations and state-owned enterprises are barred from making donations except for training or to support policy research. And parties can’t accept funding that they know or ought to know comes from dodgy sources.

Yet, in a way, the legislation comes too late. Even though donations will probably have to be acknowledged in just a few months, all the major political parties have said they would not be disclosing their funding prior to the current election. Apparently, they are keen for something they call “a level playing field”.

Only one party has so far publicly announced that it has received corporate funding: The United Democratic Movement. Party president Bantu Holomisa acknowledged that MTN had donated R250,000. But the interesting thing is that at the time Holomisa was asked last week, that was the only donation he had received.

Talking to Daily Maverick on Wednesday, Holomisa said he had subsequently got “two or three” more of around R100,000 each. Holomisa said he was relaxed about the small number of contributions. Companies had long ago stopped supporting small parties, he said.

“They go for the ANC and the DA because they know they are going to beg for tenders later. Its really institutionalised corruption.” The UDM had not asked for contributions from corporations and wouldn’t in the future, he said.

The reason the UDM received a contribution is that the old system many companies used was to give all the parties an amount equivalent to the proportion of votes they got in the previous election.

MTN’s corporate affairs executive Jacqui O’Sullivan said that while MTN does not support nor endorse any political party, it does recognise that political parties need resources to participate in an election and to thereby contribute to the growth and success of South Africa’s multi-party democracy. The board had consequently decided to make a contribution to parties contesting the 2019 election in proportion to their representation in Parliament. Total allocated was R25-million.

Yet, MTN is now more the exception than the rule. Even Anglo-American, one of the regular contributors in the early years of SA’s democracy, has stopped. Anglo’s public affairs representative Ann Farndell said the company was involved in supporting numerous political parties to help strengthen South Africa’s democratic dispensation.

“This, however, is no longer the case as we do not currently provide any funding or any kind of support for party political purposes”. The reason is to avoid any potential perception that the company “was exercising improper influence over decision-making”.

Absa’s public affairs head Songezo Zibi gave the same reason for the bank’s decision to stop funding. In addition, he said the bank was now a continental institution and if they supported political parties locally, they could legitimately be asked to do so by all political parties all over the continent, which in some cases would put the bank in an untenable position.

Other banks and companies, including Sasol and Nedbank, agreed, saying their public support focus was now on things like the CEO initiative and job-creation efforts.

It may be that for all the good intentions of the new legislation, it is closing the barn door after the horse has bolted. DM