Promotion of Access to Information Amendment Act, 2019

Promotion of Access to Information Amendment Act 31 of 2019
Parliament of South Africa
  • To provide for, and regulate, public and private funding of political parties, independent candidates and independent representatives, in particular; the establishment and management of Funds to fund represented political parties and independent representatives sufficiently; to prohibit certain donations made directly to political parties, independent candidates and independent representatives; to regulate disclosure of donations accepted; to determine the duties of political parties, independent candidates and independent representatives in respect of funding; to provide for powers and duties of the Commission; to provide for administrative fines; to create offences and penalties; to repeal the Public Funding of Represented Political Parties Act, 1997, to provide for transitional matters; and to provide for related matters.
Assented to21 January 2019
Commenced1 April 2021
Amends
Amended by
Electoral Matters Amendment Act, 2024
Status: In force (amended)

The Promotion of Access to Information Amendment Act 31 of 2019 is an Act of the Parliament of South Africa.

Background

The Public Funding of Represented Political Parties Act 103 of 1997 provided for public funding of political parties in amounts relative to their size in Parliament. The Promotion of Access to Information Act 2 of 2000 (PAIA) provided for access to information from a variety of governmental and non-governmental bodies. However, PAIA did not cover political parties.

In My Vote Counts v Speaker of the National Assembly the South African Constitutional Court ruled that the PAIA was constitutionally invalid to the extent that it failed to provide for the "recordal, preservation and reasonable disclosure" of information on the private funding of political parties and independent candidates and mandated Parliament to amend the law within 18 months.

References

Citations

  1. ↑ Iddo 2021, p. 506.
  2. ↑ Porat 2021, p. 504.

Bibliography

  • Porat, Iddo (December 2021). "Buying Democracy: The Regulation of Private Funding of Political Parties and the Press After My Vote Counts". Constitutional Court Review. 11 (1): 503–531. doi:10.2989/CCR.2021.0018.  This article incorporates text from this source, which is available under the CC BY 4.0 license.