ANC Staff Unpaid Even as Party Takes R1.2 Billion from Taxpayers

The African National Congress (ANC) is unable to pay its workers, with staff picketing outside the party’s National General Council (NGC) in Boksburg. This is despite the organisation having received well over a billion rand a year from taxpayers.

On Monday employees from the party’s central Johannesburg headquarters, Luthuli House, as well as from several provinces gathered at the gates of the Birchwood Hotel, where the NGC is under way, warning that unpaid salaries will mean a bleak Christmas for their families.

This latest crisis is only the most recent in a long line of cash crunches, but the exact amount now owed to workers has not been disclosed by the party. There are, however, clues about the scale of the problem. ANC secretary general Fikile Mbalula has confirmed that the party’s total monthly salary bill is about R20 million. ANC staff claim that salaries have gone unpaid for several consecutive months this year, with some workers still being owed money from last year.

The National Education, Health and Allied Workers Union (NEHAWU), which represents a number of affected ANC staffers, have now moved to open confrontation.

In a statement issued this week NEHAWU said, “The ANC has made workers scapegoats for the organisation’s financial mismanagement yet these workers have served the ANC with outmost dedication and loyalty, and as such deserve to be treated with dignity by the organisation… Seemingly, the ANC does not value the importance of providing financial and social security to these workers.”

ANC leaders insist that the main culprit is the Political Party Funding Act, which bans anonymous big cheques and forces all sizeable donations to political parties into the open. The party has repeatedly argued that stricter disclosure rules have frightened off traditional benefactors and left the ANC to carry a wage bill out of line with its income. The ANC was the most influential proponent of that Act.

Most South Africans are unaware that they are the biggest financiers of political parties and that taxpayers provide far more cash to political parties than do private donors.

Political parties represented in Parliament shared more than R2.2 billion last year through public allocations. According to that breakdown, the ANC received nearly R1.2 billion, with the Democratic Alliance allocated about R432 million and the Economic Freedom Fighters more than R259 million.

Earlier this week, a spokesperson for the ANC explained that its inability to pay its staff demonstrates that the party is poor. The party leadership, however, insists that the crisis is temporary and that salary issues are being resolved, but this is reportedly the fourth time this year that staff have not been paid on time.