Jacob Zuma’s uMkhonto weSizwe Party (MK) has shown that it can mobilise millions of angry voters. It has not shown that it can build, finance, and run a durable political institution.
Seven weeks before the municipal elections, its cash crisis has exposed the gap between the power of Zuma’s name and the weakness of the organisation built around it.
MK came out of the 2024 election with 58 seats in the National Assembly, the official opposition benches, and dominance in KwaZulu-Natal.
But votes do not make an institution. A functioning party needs reliable income, audited accounts, competent administrators, and the systems to pay staff and contest thousands of wards. MK built its electoral machine faster than its financial foundations.
Its latest confrontation with its own public representatives shows the problem. Zuma and party treasurer general Brian Molefe have given KwaZulu-Natal MPLs seven days to settle outstanding party levies, according to letters seen by the Mail & Guardian. Failure to pay, the letters warn, will be treated as an automatic resignation. One MPL was told R96,000 was outstanding.
This is more than a story about MK running short of cash. It exposes an underexamined feature of South African politics: taxpayers pay the salaries of MPs, MPLs, and councillors; parties claim a share of those salaries; and the same parties decide whether those representatives stay on the candidate list.
MK is not unique. The practice runs across the spectrum.
The price on democracy
The Electoral Commission’s latest political funding report shows the EFF collected R50.9m in membership fees and levies in the 2024/25 financial year. The ANC collected R49.7m, the DA R36.7m, the IFP R23.8m, the Patriotic Alliance R8.5m, and ActionSA R6m. MK reported R2.5m.
For smaller parties these are large sums. Membership fees and levies made up about 87% of the EFF’s total income, 56% of the PA’s, 38% of the IFP’s, and 34% of MK’s. For the ANC and DA, with bigger and more varied funding networks, the proportions were about 14% and 18%.
There is nothing inherently improper in this. Parties are expensive to run. Asking representatives who owe their office to the party to help fund it is a defensible form of organisational solidarity, and carries less risk than dependence on a handful of wealthy donors expecting access or influence.
The problem arises when the contribution becomes the price of holding office.
Former Bosa Gauteng MPL Ayanda Allie was required to pay 10% of her salary to the party. She acknowledged withholding it, saying she was funding constituency travel and accommodation herself because Bosa would not. She was expelled in July and joined ActionSA days later.
Her case poses the question directly. If a representative must choose between paying a party levy and funding work among constituents, to whom is that representative accountable: the voters, the legislature, or the party treasurer?
Zuma takes it to the extreme
South Africa’s proportional representation system hands party headquarters enormous power over the answer. Most legislators hold no constituency won in their own name. Their seats belong to the party’s electoral strength, and they enter through party lists. Lose party membership and, ordinarily, you lose the seat. For a national MP that means losing a package worth more than R1.3m a year.
That is a formidable enforcement mechanism. A demand from the party is never an ordinary invoice. Behind it stands the possibility of expulsion and unemployment.
Zuma’s attempt to treat nonpayment as an “automatic resignation” takes the logic to its extreme. A party cannot convert a disputed debt into a voluntary resignation by declaring it so. But it can expel a member and replace that person with the next name on its list.
That turns party finance into an instrument of political control.
The IEC’s reporting does not let the public see the full picture. It lumps ordinary membership subscriptions together with levies paid by public representatives. It is impossible to tell from the published totals how much came from rank-and-file members and how much was taken from taxpayer-funded salaries.
Nor can voters easily establish what rates parties charge, whether levies are calculated on gross or after-tax income, whether ministers pay more than backbenchers, or what sanctions apply in arrears.
For a disclosure system designed to reveal who finances political power, that is a material gap. It is not the only one: donations below the threshold appear only as aggregates, and loans can fund parties without being treated as donations.
How has MK paid its bills?
MK shows the other side of this opacity. Its audited statements record total income of just R7.2m for 2024/25 outside the public funding system, including only R380,555 in disclosed donations above the threshold. Yet it ran a national campaign, set up structures across the country, and became the third-largest party.
That invites legitimate questions about how the campaign was paid for – and why a party that won millions of votes is chasing its own MPLs for arrears weeks before an election.
MK has not been declared bankrupt. But a cash shortage will hurt its municipal campaign. Local elections need money for deposits, posters, polling agents, and candidate support across thousands of wards. Zuma’s popularity cannot pay organisers or build financial controls.
South Africa needs parties that are financially sustainable without being captured by big donors. Levies can help – but only if they are transparent. Parties should publish their levy schedules. The IEC should report membership subscriptions separately from contributions by public representatives. Loans, arrears, and forgiven debts should be disclosed.
MK’s crisis has opened a window into the hidden economics of South African politics. The state funds parties directly. It pays the representatives those parties appoint. Parties then reclaim part of those salaries, and keep the power to remove anyone who does not comply.
A levy may be one of the cleaner ways to finance a political organisation. But when the body demanding the money also controls the candidate list, the disciplinary process, and ultimately the seat, the levy is more than a contribution.
It is the price of staying in public office.
Catch more viewpoints of Majova, political editor at Scrolla.Africa, a mobile-first news site covering breaking stories fast from communities across South Africa in English and isiZulu