Q&A with IEC deputy chair on Political Party Funding Act

Will there be any consequences for parties that didn't disclose?

They needed to disclose any donation they received that exceeded the R100,000 benchmark.

Aren't they obliged to show you a record of anything received?

They do have to do that on an annual basis. We've issued a report for the first quarter of the first year of operation [of the act], so we've still got three quarters to get to that point where we would need to be considering consequences.

Will you audit parties that claim they have nothing to declare?

To be spending taxpayers' money on auditing over 500 parties .

Aren't there parties you'd prioritise?

At the end of the financial year one of the things we'll be looking for in the larger parties is to ensure that their own auditing has taken place.

So we'll be voting for parties without knowing who their funders are?

That is a concern.

Can the elections be considered free and fair when some parties have opened up and others not?

Your assumption is that they have not opened up on things they ought to have opened up on.

Is it credible that only three out of 504 parties received donations of more than R100,000 in an election year?

We're talking about a three-month period.

So voters have to accept that a lot of the money used to get their votes will be dirty?

They have to accept that they won't know.

Should parties be allowed to use investment vehicles such as Chancellor House to fund their campaigns?

It's a type of contribution that needs to be declared.

Isn't the whole point of the act to prevent parties funding their campaigns with dirty money?

Certainly to prevent them using the proceeds of crime. If we received information that money came from a company involved in corruption, we'd have to report that to the investigative authorities.

Can the IEC be taken seriously as an independent organisation when it is led by ANC deployees?

I don't know that it's led by any cadre or deployee of the ANC.

The chair was appointed by Jacob Zuma, wasn't he?

He was identified as somebody who was supported by Jacob Zuma. He doesn't act on any mandate from the ANC.

You yourself are known to be closely associated with the ANC, aren't you?

I don't think that people who have had dealings with the ANC or been supported by the ANC are people who can be understood to be acting on any mandate from that organisation.

Aren't decisions such as reopening candidate registration, which favours the ANC, always going to raise suspicions of bias given your links with the ANC?

I think issues of bias are going to come up in relation to any decision we take. Just as our refusal to open the nominations when the ANC wrote letters of demand, went to court et cetera, prior to the decision of the court that we needed to reopen registration, led to hostility from the ANC.