Paul Mashatile: ANC’s cash desperation could give funders power over policy decisions

There is a chance that the cash-strapped African National Congress (ANC) may be influenced by outsiders regarding policy and government decisions, considering their desperation to resolve their current cashflow issues.

This according to the party’s treasurer-general Paul Mashatile on Friday, during an interview with the SABC.

Mashatile said about 70% of the party’s funding was coming from the private sector, which posed the danger of outside influence in the future although, it has not happened yet.

“There is such a danger. I must say we have survived so far not to be pressurised by the private sector, because many of them are of course supporters of the ANC, so they give handsome donations,” said Mashatile.

“It is always a danger that when you are desperate as a political party you could be pressurised by the private sector to say that you can’t pay salaries, now we will help you but we also are looking for this or that.”

He said to avert this, the party was looking at alternative sources of funding, including the recent crowdfunding campaign that was introduced earlier this week, as well as increasing membership fees.

“Members themselves (must) contribute to the party… increase membership fees levies,” explained Mashatile.

He said that the party was looking to increase it’s membership fee from R20 annually to at least R240.

“With membership fees we want to be careful because we come from a very low base. People pay R20 rands a year membership in the ANC – so its like R1.60 a month.

“What we are going to do is to increase that a bit.

“We (will) exempts the pensioners, and people who are unemployed etc because generally they might struggle. But someone like me whose working surely can afford R240 a year which is just R20 a month – so we are looking at those ideas and then of-cause we also get money through levies by ministers and MP’s – we are looking at an increase as well but not very big.”

“Of course it’s a difficult situation. We can’t also make big increases there you know? Our people are already choked by taxes and a whole lot of other things, so our increase is going to be very minimal. We will still rely on the private sector for a while but my view, if you were to ask me, I favour the situation where a government itself does ensure adequate funding for political parties. It’s good for democracy.”

With only a week since the party started their crowdfunding campaign after it emerged that it was unable to pay its staffers, Mashatile could not give an indication as to how much money had been raised thus far.

“We only kicked offcrowd funding at the beginning of this week – so its fairly new. We will give it a bit of time to see how it works. It’s a fairly new initiative that we adding on.”

On elections and postponement
Mashatile conceded that going to elections in October would put the party at a disadvantage with it not being able to register candidates in about 90 municipalities.

“We would favour a situation where elections are postponed to next year. It will work good for us – we will go and fix our mistakes, sort out the list of those ward councillors where we did not submit – so we will have time.

“If elections are in October, we are in trouble because we cant fix… We are going to have areas where we have no candidates.

“That will be a setback to us – if the elections go ahead we have no way of fixing the problem – we will just have to accept that we are going to live with the situation where have no candidates in a particular area.

He said the party, nonetheless, was preparing for the elections in October and putting measures in place to be ready should it come to that although they were hoping that the Concourt would agree with the Moseneke inquiry and postpone the elections.

ANC was not tipped off about the Concourt ruling in favour of the IEC
Mashatile denied allegations made by the Federal Chairperson of the Democratic Alliance that the party withdrew its application to the Electoral Court to have candidate registration reopened, because it was tipped off that the Concourt would rule in the favour of the IEC.

“We don’t have any relationship with the Concourt,” explained Mashatile.

“We respect the separation of powers – so we do not talk to the judges, our views was that perhaps, let’s not jump the gun. Let’s wait for the Concourt ruling, so its almost like we are pre-empting.

“Its our own assessment and we should not be talking to them,” he said.

-The Citizen

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