With a twist of irony, the public hearings into party political funding unfolded in what used to be the banking hall of, at different times, the South African Reserve Bank, Standard Bank and as far back as 1894, the African Banking Corporation Building. Today it’s the conference venue of a posh hotel, sensitively converted with a nod to history, with huge chandeliers and green- and-brown-speckled marble slabs on pillars and walls.

With more than 4,300 written submissions already received by the Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC), Thursday saw the start of public hearings on the proposed regulations. Courtesy of the May 2018 elections the process was delayed. The regulations had already been published for comment on 1 March 2019, some 37 days after President Cyril Ramaphosa signed on to the statute books the Political Party Funding Act after Parliament had passed the legislation in June 2018.

The law then was widely welcomed as an important accountability mechanism in South Africa’s constitutional democracy — as it was again on Thursday. Central is voters’ right to know who funds the political party they might want to cast their ballots for. Or put differently, transparency in who funds political parties is part of the constitutional right of exercising political choices and participation in elections.

A refrain throughout Thursday was for the speedy implementation of the regulations to give effect to the law that must be in place before the local government elections in 2021.

Two issues emerged across the board: the possible manipulation of the R100,000 threshold when the disclosure requirements kick in also for donations in kind, unless the IEC allows anonymity — concerns were raised that donations would be kept to, say R99,999 to avoid disclosure —and easy access to the disclosure details.

At present the regulations say details of party political donations by private persons, companies and trusts — banned is money from foreign governments, foreign agencies and South Africa’s own state-owned entities (SOEs) — would be published in the Government Gazette.

It seems the IEC was thinking of making these gazettes available at its offices, similarly to the current practice of making its procurement details accessible.

More needed to be done to facilitate access, according to Council for the Advancement of the South African Constitution (Casac) executive secretary Lawson Naidoo. He said the IEC was obliged to provide the details on its website or a linked website:

“This is vitally important given that online platforms are the primary source of comparable information in modern times.”

It’s a sentiment shared by amaBhungane, the collective of investigative journalists, lobby group MyVoteCounts, but also trade union federation Cosatu, which also pushed for all private donations to be declared, regardless of the R100,000 threshold.

“It will not take a rocket scientist to figure out (private donors) can simply donate R99,000 to avoid disclosure.  This ridiculous escape clause threatens to collapse the act’s progressive objectives,” said Cosatu parliamentary co-ordinator Matthew Parks.

There was a crisis of confidence in political parties in these days of State Capture and corruption, said Parks, adding it was well worth recording every single rand — even if that meant the act had to be returned to Parliament for amendment.

Earlier, amaBhungane advocacy co-ordinator Karabo Rajuili cautioned about donation-splitting to dodge the R100,000 disclosure threshold, the need for disclosure of trustees and shareholders, or the link between subsidiaries and a specific company. These types of disclosures, alongside familial relationships, were important to record for transparency and the public interest, Rajuili said.

MyVoteCounts, the advocacy group that pushed for political party donation transparency, told the public hearings additional donation information on successful applications for anonymity was needed. This could include the number of requests for anonymity, how many were approved and the total value of these anonymous donations.

“We can’t ignore the damage done to our institutions (through) State Capture and corruption,” said MyVoteCounts Director Joel Bregman.

The DA was a little more circumspect, arguing the regulation requiring bank statements to accompany the form reflecting even “Aunty Maud’s R20” was onerous and possibly ultra vires.

DA Federal Executive chairperson James Selfe and self-described “simple book-keeper” and DA MP Alf Lees pointed out the DA ran several thousand bank accounts, all of which accepted donations. There was simply not the skill, or know-how, at the local level where volunteers usually drove party activity for this kind of disclosure regimen. An “army of book-keepers” would be needed to comply with the disclosure admin.

IEC Chairperson Glen Mashinini intervened at least twice to dampen expectations amid the push at the public hearings for easy access online via the IEC website to private political donations, transparency on the quantities of permissible anonymous donations (the donor is, however, declared confidentially to the IEC) and broad expectations that these regulations would help clean up the murkiness of money in politics.

“Implementation will be phased in… and so some of the aspects may not follow immediately. Expectation just needs to be managed. The ultimate is that we have an overall, comprehensive regimen of disclosure,” said Mashinini.

But as part of the process — as yet without a committed deadline — the IEC on Thursday announced that experienced “financial expert” George Mahlangu had joined as chief executive for party funding. It would be in no small measure up to him to drive the implementation of the regulations.

A prepped and ready ANC delegation of ab0ut 10 people attended Thursday’s public hearings, although its turn as the second of two political parties to make public submissions was only on Friday.

ANC national spokesperson Dakota Legoete said the party fully supported the private party political funding disclosure, even if it had some suggestions.

“It’s in our interest to account, to respect the rule of law, no matter the number of (bank) accounts.”

That it has come to the point of public hearings is the outcome of 15 years of work by civil society that finally, in the past couple of years, finally seemed to get political parties on board. As far back as 2004, the now-defunct Idasa pushed for disclosure, turning to the courts when the ANC, IFP and the then-Democratic Party and New National Party sang off the same page, refusing to disclose their private donors. More recently MyVoteCounts, which had raised the issue in Parliament as far back as 2011, successfully turned to the courts.

In September 2017 the Western Cape High Court ruled voters have a right to know who funds a political party as part of exercising their political rights. By the time the Constitutional Court confirmed this in June 2018, the legislation had made its way through Parliament.

That is because in no small measure the ANC had been under pressure to deliver on at least some of the resolutions of its 2012 Mangaung national conference resolutions. Private political donation regulation was one such resolution. With the ad hoc committee having recommended Parliament pass this law, the ANC could head to its December 2017 Nasrec ANC national conference with something in the bag.

As it turned out, the May 2019 elections were held without private political donation transparency. The IEC, stuck amid organising the poll, put the regulations to give effect to the law on the backburner.

But the push from civil society, trade unions and others is now on in earnest to ensure the 2021 municipal poll is held with voters knowing who donated what to which political party. DM