The local government elections are set to take place on November 1 after the minister of cooperative governance, Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma announced the revised date last week.
The campaign season is about to kick off in earnest and political parties are ready to ‘woo’ voters in what is likely to be a competitive election that has already had multiple caveats to the story over the past few months.
There’s the reopening of the candidate registration, the legal challenges from opposition parties to the reopening, the ANC’s missing candidates and no money to pay ANC employees.
Political commentator Justice Malala believes the upcoming elections will test South Africa’s democratic fabric like never before even going so far as to say the Electoral Commission (IEC) should be closely scrutinised during these elections.
Malala believes the ANC could be ruined should the decision to reopen candidate registration be overturned by the Constitutional Court.
“…the IEC’s reopening of the registration of candidates, a move which favours the laggard ANC after it failed to register its people in some 95 wards — is now before the ConCourt.
If the justices scupper the IEC’s decision to reopen candidate registration then the ANC will be destroyed in much of local SA.”
While Adrian Basson writes about the political party funding figures that were released last week.
Basson says “Some of the biggest political scandals in our democratic history were linked to party funding.”
Basson commended both the ANC and DA for disclosing their donations over R100 000 and while questions do remain around how accurate those figures are we at least have a line of sight on the two largest parties’ finances.
But the more alarming omission is that of the EFF who failed to declare its donations.
Basson writes, “A glaring absentee from the list is the EFF, the country’s third-largest political party infamous for accepting money and services from dodgy characters like tobacco dealers and family members of EFF leaders implicated in the VBS scandal.”
Based on the EFF leadership’s personal lifestyles it simply can’t be true that the party have no donations over R100 000 writes Basson.
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Here’s a roundup of interesting opinions and analyses:
NATASHA MARRIAN: Of flies and tigers — and the ANC’s forked tongue – Financial Mail
Massive debt, unpaid salaries, dry donation taps – Daily Maverick
PIET MOUTON | Unvaccinated must have limited access to malls, businesses – Fin24
LUKANYO MNYANDA: Masondo’s Eskom ‘solution’ raises as many questions as it does answers – Business Day (for subscribers)
Global players enabled ‘Zupta’ corruption – Mail & Guardian
Welcome to the dispiriting scene that is South African politics – Daily Maverick
What Viceroy did to Capitec was illegal, simple as that – Business Day (for subscribers)
