President Cyril Ramaphosa.

• The Political Party Funding Act of 2018 is aimed at regulating party funding.
• It also compels them to disclose their donors and prohibits donations from foreign sources for campaigns.
• The law will kick in before the next local government elections. 

Political parties will have to start declaring their sources of funding before the local government elections, scheduled to be held later this year.

President Cyril Ramaphosa on Friday said in a statement that he had promulgated the Political Party Funding Act of 2018, and that it would come into effect on 1 April.

He called it a “historic development for transparency and accountability in South Africa”.

Ramaphosa earlier came in for criticism for delaying the promulgation of the Act, which he signed almost two years ago already.

It will regulate public and private funding of political parties and establishes funds to provide political parties represented in Parliament and legislatures with funding to undertake their work, he said in a statement.

ALSO READ | IEC says its systems are ready for the Political Party Funding Act

It requires that donations be disclosed by parties and donors to the Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC).

Foreign governments or agencies, foreign persons or entities, organs of state or state-owned enterprises are no longer allowed to make donations to parties for campaigns.

Foreign entities could, however, still provide money for training, skills development or policy development.

Members of political parties are also prohibited from receiving donations for anything other than political party purposes.

Civil society organisations were critical about the time it took to promulgate this Act, and wrote to Ramaphosa about it at the end of last year.

He replied, promising to promulgate it before April.

The IEC
has welcomed the coming into effect of the act, which it said will coincide
with the start of a new financial year for the public sector and political
parties.

“The implementation
of the act is one of the most important and far-reaching enhancements to our
electoral democracy in the past 25 years,” it said in a statement.

The IEC said
it would next week publish the final regulations for the act “as part of the
final phase of preparing for implementation”.

An
official earlier told News24 the IEC was already putting in place tools to
implemement the regulations.

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Jacob Zuma is seen in court.

• French arms company Thales is a co-accused in Jacob Zuma’s fraud and corruption case.
• Thales was attempting to have the racketeering charge it faces scrapped from the matter.
• The State is now one step closer to bringing the matter to trial.

The KwaZulu-Natal High Court in Pietermaritzburg has dismissed with costs French arms company Thales’ bid to challenge the racketeering charge it faces along with former president Jacob Zuma.

The case brought by Thales, which is being represented by Oscar Pistorius’ former defence advocate Barry Roux, represented the only barrier standing in the way of Zuma’s long-awaited trial actually proceeding.

READ | State vs Thales: Judgment on Friday will determine future of Zuma’s corruption prosecution

Thales has yet to comment on the decision. Should it elect not to appeal, the Zuma and Thales corruption case could start as early as April this year.

It is the State’s case that Thales agreed to pay Zuma a R500 000-a-year bribe, in exchange for his “political protection” from any potential investigation of South Africa’s multibillion-rand arms deal. Thales, then known as Thompson-CSF, had scored a R2.6-billion contract to provide four navy frigates to SA’s government in 1997, as part of that deeply controversial R60 billion deal.

Zuma’s financial advisor Schabir Shaik’ s company Nkobi had been chosen by Thales as its black empowerment partner in SA after alleged lobbying by Zuma. Shaik was convicted in 2005 of having brokered that deal as part of his corrupt relationship with Zuma.

The NPA is now pursuing Zuma and Thales for racketeering, a charge usually reserved for the prosecution of organised crime, and is pursued against individuals and entities embroiled in an organised criminal enterprise. It carries with it a 25-year jail sentence.

In a brief statement on Friday morning, the NPA said it welcomed the court’s decision.

“We look forward to the criminal hearing,” the statement ended.

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