South Africa : Bill On Disclosure Of Political Funding Enacted

President Cyril Ramaphosa last week signed into law a legislation that will require political parties and independent candidates to record the names and details of their donors and make financial records available on a quarterly basis. The Promotion of Access to Information Amendment (PAIA) Act amends the Promotion of Access to Information Act of 2000. The Act aims to provide for the recording, preservation and disclosure of information in relation to the private funding of political parties and independent candidates.
The legislation forms part of the broader reforms in political party funding in order to provide transparency on who provides donations to political parties and independent candidates. The Act also aims at ensuring that heads of political parties create and keep records of any donation exceeding the prescribed threshold of R100 000 (FCFA 3.5 million). The records must be made available quarterly to the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC). Donors must also disclose the donations to the IEC within 30 days. The IEC would need to report these disclosures to Parliament and donation records must be kept for a period of five years.
In 2018, the Constitutional Court ruled that the public has a right to know who funds political parties. The judgment confirmed a 2017 Cape Town High Court ruling that certain parts of the PAIA Act were unconstitutional, because they did not provide for the disclosure of private funding for political parties. 
Reacting to the legislation, political analyst Ralph Mathekga said, the move was good news for voters. "This gives voters the information that they would ordinarily not know. As a voter, you can now decide who to vote for based on more than just emotions. We can, for instance, see where a party's interest is when just looking at its donors," he added.
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