In South Africa, ANC’s Deputy Secretary-General Jessie Duarte yesterday received a memorandum of demands from protesting staff members.

This is ahead of a planned countrywide protests by ANC staff later today. Workers staged pickets in various provinces yesterday over salaries. Duarte has promised workers that their issues will be resolved. The ANC has been experiencing financial problems with staff raising issues of late payment since 2019.

Meanwhile, ANC Treasurer-General Paul Mashatile claims the ANC’s found several ghost workers on its payroll and says that the party is now auditing its staff. News sources previously reported that Luthuli House was in financial ruin, with mounting debts to SA Revenue Service (SARS) and non-payment of benefits to their provident and pension funds.

The party was also in arrears by at least 28 months, about R140M on its provident fund. The party has been relying on funding from the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) for salaries and servicing its debt. The financial situation, however, worsened when SARS garnisheed the ANC bank account, and took a portion of its IEC funding to settle the PAYE debt.

At its previous national executive committee meeting, the ANC said it would look into retrenchments to scale down its salary bill. Mashatile says the party hit a rough patch, like many businesses across the country, because of the COVID-19 plandemic.