NEWS ANALYSIS
President Cyril Ramaphosa’s CR17 campaign to be elected the ANC’s president has, with its fund-raising infrastructure, professionalised and institutionalised what other candidates would do out of the boots of their cars.
The fall-out from the emails leaked from Ramaphosa’s 2017 campaign marks another positive development in heightening transparency.
This comes after civil society organisations scored a victory when the Political Party Funding Act was signed in January, which requires parties to reveal their funders.
The ANC is taking this a step further by turning its attention towards regulating internal party elections, including the way they are funded and what funding is used for.
But a clear distinction should be made between money used to fund a campaign and money used to buy delegates’ votes. There has not been an ANC elective conference in the past decade in which votes were not bought.
The details of the inner workings of the CR17 campaign were provided in Ramaphosa’s submission to public protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane, which he publicly released in July.
Follow