Party to the Plunder? Transparency is needed on ANC’s tender-linked fundraising machinery

Scorpio’s latest investigations raise fresh questions over the ANC’s financial gains from government contracts.

Each year, the state in all its varied parts pays hundreds of billions of rands in taxpayers’ money to thousands upon thousands of private sector contractors.

This is a colossal pot of gold. Evidence that the governing ANC has been helping itself to little nuggets of the bullion has long tainted the party’s fundraising machinery.

Think Chancellor House. The ANC investment vehicle’s ties to government contracts were first revealed in 2006. This was a warning call about the dark arts that seemed to underpin the party’s finances. In subsequent years, the links between the ANC’s fortunes and questionable government contracts were further exposed. The Zondo Commission too heard testimony that proceeds from dodgy tenders had found their way to the ANC’s coffers.

Today, Scorpio reveals in forensic detail how the party banked a R10-million donation on the back of dubious tenders. The very mechanism that moved the funds into the party’s bank account speaks of possible criminal intent. The party couldn’t risk receiving the funds directly from the businessman who’d so richly benefited from the tenders. The donation was instead channelled through a mysterious fundraiser — a likely attempt to conceal the true source of the funds.

A second investigation will detail how a consultancy firm appeared to forward chunks of its tender riches to the ANC. The company’s owner was well within his rights to donate money to any party of his choosing. However, the proximity between inflows from government departments and payments to the governing party make for terrible optics. The atmospherics are further blighted by transfers during the same timeframe to children of prominent political figures.

The transactions we report on this week occurred in a tender ecosystem that is ripe for abuse. The government officials who preside over contracts are almost invariably also ANC members – the much-debated cadre deployment policy has seen to that. We have a right to ask tough questions regarding the status quo. What stops the ANC from exerting pressure on their cadres to ensure contracts are awarded to the “right” companies? And what of the companies that so generously gift cash to the party? What’s to say these donations aren’t a means to secure more contracts?

If this is indeed what has been going on, donations to the ANC may very well constitute alleged criminality. Payments to the party would no longer constitute arm’s-length donations. They’d instead be viewed as illicit gratuities; kickbacks for tenders already in the bag, or bribes for future contracts.

The ANC itself appears all too aware that at least some of its past donations were accompanied by alleged corruption.

In response to our queries, the party said it “acknowledged” evidence presented to the Zondo Commission regarding donations from beneficiaries of government contracts, “including in instances where the awarding of those contracts are alleged to have been unlawful”.

A leaked recording of President Cyril Ramaphosa from a 2022 National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting also comes to mind.

“Each one of us knows that quite a bit of money that is used in campaigns — in bussing people around, in doing all manner of things — is often from state resources and public resources,” Ramaphosa had told his NEC colleagues.

The president later claimed that his comments pertained to the alleged abuse of State Security Agency (SSA) resources, but they seem equally relevant to the diversion of tender cash to the party’s pockets.

The question, then, is not if the ANC had benefited from public expenditure. Instead, we should wonder to what extent its donations hinged on dodgy tenders. What were the practices and strategies at the heart of soliciting funds in this fashion? Crucially, how much of those activities would pass legal muster?

Our latest reporting offers only tiny glimpses into the world of ANC fundraising. It is vital that we somehow secure a fuller account.

The public needs to know whether the governing party had erred only in exceptional cases.

Or was this perhaps the rule?

Was the ANC a party to the wholesale plunder of this country’s public resources? DM