S.Africa: The Black Ruling Party’s Money tricks – The ANC’s clever party funding trick
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The ANC’s clever party funding trick
James Myburgh | 12 June 2025
James Myburgh writes on the financial structures that shield the movement’s finances from meaningful disclosure
One of the more surprising and hopeful developments in South Africa’s democracy was a sudden move by the African National Congress majority in parliament to bring transparency to party funding in South Africa in 2017. The Political Party Funding Act of 2018, which eventually took effect in 2021, banned foreign funding of political parties, required disclosure of all donations over R100 000, and limited the amount any single donor could donate to R15 million per year. This drive, coming as it did from the top levels of the ANC during the Zuma-era, was welcome but highly unexpected, given that the party was known to have often solicited and received large donations from foreign potentates in the past.
Such funding transparency has proved invaluable to the ANC as it has been used to rebut allegations that the party received money from Iran to pursue the ‘genocide’ case against Israel at the International Court of Justice. When asked by the Daily Maverick if this was true, ANC spokesperson Mahlengi Bhengu replied: “Unlike other parties, or even NGOs for that matter, the ANC does declare where its funding is derived.” The Daily Maverick then approvingly noted that “if the ANC did receive funding from Iran, it would be a violation” of the 2018 Act, “which prohibits South African political parties from accepting any funding from foreign governments except for training and policy development.”
Over the past four years since the disclosure requirement took effect, the ANC has disclosed R217 million in donations, according to the IEC. The single largest donor has been the Batho Batho Trust which has donated the maximum amount possible (R60 million). The Chancellor House Trust, meanwhile, has donated R48.5 million directly and a further R35 million via United Manganese of Kalahari, a business in which it has a large stake. These two sources accounted for approximately two-thirds of the ANC’s declared revenue.
To recognise the sleight of hand at work here one needs to understand how the ANC has historically structured its finances. In the early 1990s the Nordic countries funded the core organisational costs of the ANC – which functioned as a small state and had a budget to match. The movement knew that such funding was to come to an end with the transition to democracy and needed to secure alternative long-term funding streams. In 1992 it thus established the Batho Batho Trust to house its capital, investments, and unearmarked donations. The Trust then set up the Thebe Investment Corporation as the movement’s investment vehicle.
The plan was that the ANC would use its political influence and power to secure shareholdings and revenue-making opportunities for the Batho Batho Trust (via Thebe) and the Trust would, in turn, fund the ANC’s activities as a political organisation. The trustees were, however, empowered to refuse the insatiable funding demands of the ANC as an organisation, as it was notorious for its financial ill-discipline. Over the years this led to tension and occasional public spats between these two separate branches of the movement.
Following this division of the ANC’s finances into separate entities, one tasked with collecting and hoarding money, and the other with spending it, the ANC as an organisation started running up a massive overdraft with the banks. This also meant that when it came to the 1994 elections, donations for the party’s election campaign were channelled into yet another trust – both to shield foreign donors and protect the money from creditors. These were just two trusts of the many established for various purposes at the time. Mandela’s personal lawyer, Ismail Ayob, would later disclose that he had “formed some thirty trusts” – both personal and political – at the ANC leader’s behest.
The Chancellor House companies and trust were set up in the early 2000s with the same purpose as the Batho Batho Trust and Thebe. The ANC government at the time was forcing mining companies to disgorge significant shareholdings via the Mining Charter and Chancellor House was one vehicle through which the movement sought to scoop up this plunder. It was later positioned to benefit from the large procurement contracts pursued by Eskom from 2007 onward.
What this means is that, historically, the ANC always kept its capital and investments in trusts, and sensitive money flows have been directed into such entities as well. These trusts were also used to fund the expenses of the movement, including past election campaigns, without the money necessarily going through the ANC’s organisational bank accounts, especially when those were deep in the red.
The periodic funding troubles of the ANC as an organisation are thus something of an optical illusion. The movement as a whole has – in reality – accumulated substantial assets through the three waves of ‘state capture,’ stretching back to 1994. The core organisational expenses of the ANC are, moreover, today mostly covered by the South African taxpayer.
When the ANC discloses donations from the Batho Batho Trust or Chancellor House Trust, or companies part owned by them, all it is disclosing are financial transfers from one part of the movement to another.
Crucially, the carefully drawn provisions of the Political Party Funding Act do not apply to the movement’s trusts. The ANC is not obliged to disclose the identities of its trusts, their business interests, who may have donated money to them, or payments they have made, except those to the ANC’s organisational bank accounts.
The Act has, by contrast, severely impacted the Democratic Alliance and other opposition parties. Many potential donors do not want their identities publicly revealed, given the power the ANC wields over the economy, and so shy away from donating. The opposition has been denied the chance to tap into the sort of foreign funding that powered the ANC’s rise to political dominance in the 1990s, and their income has been further squeezed by the donation limits. Although the public have been led to believe otherwise, the Act has had only a marginal impact, if any, on the ANC’s usual financial modes of operation.
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