City Press | Thamsanqa Malinga | 30 May 2021

The recent financial woes of the governing party in failing to meet its obligations towards staff salaries is an issue whose surface has merely been scratched. Much needs to be interrogated, but the sight of a once-glorious movement becoming cash-strapped does not require us to lift the carpet to see the dirt.

We need only ask ourselves what the suspended secretary-general of the party, Ace Magashule, meant in his letter last year when he referred to a “decline in donor funding”. This phrase was repeated recently as the issue of nonpayment of salaries resurfaced. Party seniors were quoted as saying that funders were “scared” and “staying away”.