Zukile Majova
It’s all the classic symptoms of a business going out of business.
The ANC now owes over R250 million to various service providers and has yet to pay staff salaries for the month of May.
The party also owes more than R80 million to SARS.
In 2020 they were also ordered by the South Gauteng High Court to pay R102 million to KZN marketing agency Ezulweni Investments for election posters.
The party’s top six met on Monday to thrash out a plan to pay staff as the employees at ANC head office Luthuli House are scheduled to picket on Tuesday. The party deducts provident fund contributions from its employees every month, but the provident fund is in arrears dating back to 2018.
The party is in endless negotiations with service providers who did work for them during the elections that made Cyril Ramaphosa a president.
A new law requiring full disclosure of political donations in excess of R100,000 has also affected the party. Some of the companies that have pulled out did so because they are doing business with the state and their donations to the ANC could be interpreted as kickbacks.
ANC funding woes date as far back as 2006 when Mail & Guardian exposed ANC front company Chancellor House as having a 25% stake in Hitachi Power Africa. Hitachi was awarded a R20 billion boiler supply contract by Eskom and a R13 billion turbine contract for Medupi power station in Lephalale in Limpopo.
ANC treasurer-general Paul Mashatile told the SABC that the Hitachi deal created too much noise forcing Chancellor House to pull out of that deal.
“The position we took was that we should get our investment companies away from state tenders and as a result Chancellor House pulled out of that deal and since then they are not doing any business with state entities,” said Mashatile at the time.
Mashatile said they expect to pay most of their staff some time this week.
Image source: @MailandGuardian
