As part of its commitment to accountability and transparency, non-governmental organisation My Vote Counts on Thursday launched an online party funding tracking tool, Whose Vote Counts, which aims to provide voters with information on private political donors and their business interests.

Speaking during the launch, My Vote Counts director Minhaj Jeenah explained that the tool covered donations made in-kind, as well as monetary donations worth over R100 000 over the last two financial years.

He added that the data included the identity of donors, their businesses and through which channels they funded parties. This did not include gala dinners and dinner tickets.

In April 2021, President Cyril Ramaphosa signed into law the Political Party Funding Act, which regulates public and private funding of political parties.

The Act establishes funds to provide political parties represented in Parliament and legislatures with funding to undertake their work, and it also requires that donations be disclosed by parties and donors to the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC).

Since 2021, 22% (or over R61-million) of all disclosed private funding donations has been from the mining industry followed by the energy industry at 19.4% (R54-million), and 16% from online gambling businessman Martin Moshal, who spent just over R44-million.

The Whose Vote Counts tool was developed by civic technology organisation Open Up to assist media houses in their reporting when tracking and assessing the relationships between donors and parties.

“Working with an investigative journalist, we gathered as much information as we could and put together a report. Open Up then did the incredible work of putting this information into the easily understandable format that is,” Jeenah said.

He revealed that last year, activist organisation Ndifuna Ukwazi approached My Vote Counts wanting to know if any funder linked to a property development in Cape Town was also linked to the Democratic Alliance (DA). Public health and law initiative Health Justice Initiative also wanted to know if the organisation knew of pharmaceutical or health insurance companies that were linked to the African National Congress (ANC).

“Other organisations approached us… prompting us to develop something that helps civil society, the public and journalists better understand the relationship between parties, donors and donors' business interests,” Jeenah explained.

He said with the Whose Vote Counts tool users could see not only the sources of funding to political parties and their numerous interests, but also understand in more detail how trusts were set up to fund political parties. It did this through graphs and other visuals, he added.

“While not all private funding can be assumed to be for dubious reasons, it is important to zoom in. For example, is there a link between Martin Moshal's wallet, the DA, and the online gambling Bill? What about Shell, the West Coast, and the ANC? United Manganese?,” he questioned.

Jeenah noted that there were also donors who were not necessarily "household names" who seem to have an interest in funding political parties, such as the Mashaba family, and investment company CEO Khandani Msibi.

“We will look into working with partners such as Corruption Watch SA to gather this information. Transparency is only part of this work, we will strengthen the accountability aspect of this tool as we want the people to have an equal say in decisions that are made by them,” said Jeenah.

He added that the IEC had also mentioned in the past that they would set up a team of investigators and work with fiscal institutions to maximise party funding transparency and ensure that disclosures from parties were truthful. The journey to maximum party funding transparency was not done yet, he said.

In May, the organisation approached the Western Cape High Court to get the Political Party Funding Act amended to allow for the disclosure of all private donations made to political parties, and not only those of more than R100 000.

My Vote Counts is challenging the constitutionality of aspects of the Act, saying the legislation does not require political parties to account for how private funding is spent, unlike the case in relation to public funding.