The Mail & Guardian newspaper announced on its front page on Friday that "The ANC is broke." The paper reported that the party had been unable to pay some of their staff their salaries for over two months, while others had repeatedly been paid late. There were also rumours circulating that the party was planning to lay off close to half of its staff in a bid to cut costs (see here).
The immediate cause of the party's cash crunch, the newspaper stated, was the decline in the ANC's support in the 2014 national and provincial elections. This had left the part with 16 fewer seats in the parliament and 13 fewer seats in the provincial legislatures. This had resulted in an R20m decrease in electoral funding from the Independent Electoral Commission. The newspaper further reported that:
"Earlier this month, angry staff members confronted senior ANC leaders, demanding salary increases. "We said to them: ‘Comrades, please bear with us ... the ship is tight'," [ANC Secretary General] Mantashe told the M&G. "When things turn around we will look at what option we have."
The newspaper added that apart from the decline in state funding the party has also being struggling "to raise money from private funders over the past few years. It now faces liquidation threats from suppliers who are owed millions of rands for services they rendered to the ANC."
The M&G's front page was tweeted by Grubstreet editor Gill Moodie as part of her daily front page round-up:
Who is being courted to top up ANC coffers? SA front pages, Fri 2014-10-31 http://t.co/HqQ7OH8jv0 pic.twitter.com/120ppGCqcA