By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
Build One South Africa (BOSA) leader, Mmusi Maimane, has confirmed that his party will appear on all ballots on Election Day, May 29, after collecting about 140,000 signature submissions.
Maimane was briefing media outside the IEC offices in Centurion on Thursday morning.
He said BOSA managed to gather 140,000 signatures.
The IEC required close to 60,000 signatures for new parties that want to contest.
Maimane said while it hasn’t been easy, he managed to submit the signatures to the IEC before the Friday deadline.
“Being a new political party has not come without its challenges. Between the government, the IEC and the Constitutional Court, many unnecessary – and some unjust – hurdles have been placed in our path.
“One of the more unfair hurdles has been the signature requirements for new entrants. Previously, a new party needed only 1000 signatures of support to qualify to contest elections. However, the new Electoral Amendment Act has radically hiked this number up in a sinister effort to stymie competition and political choice,” says Maimane.
He said BOSA will be challenging the entire act in the Constitutional Court, which will be heard on a date after the 29 May elections.
“The court last week rejected our urgent application, meaning that the status quo will govern the elections in May.
“As the law stands, new parties require approximately 60,000 signatures – almost 60 times more signatures than previously. This is an unjustifiable high burden. Over the past weeks, we have seen many new entrants struggle to meet this requirement, some even dropping out of the race.”
Maimane says his party also approved 120 candidates for election under the BOSA umbrella.
“This group has the right blend of skills, experience, diversity and passion to serve the people of South Africa with aplomb in legislatures across the country. We will be submitting 19 lists to the IEC – one National-to-National, nine Regional-to-National and nine Regional-to-Regional.”
The party has also had to make payments to the IEC to contest and run its national campaign, for which the R7m raised in funding from donations will come in handy, Maimane said.
“As required by law, we have disclosed all donations received that exceed R100,000, which is made public each quarter. While we have received a number of donations exceeding that amount, there have been countless more donations which were less than R100,000.
“To date we have raised several million rand in funding, most of which were small donations from ordinary South Africans who believe in the BOSA vision. We will use these funds to run our national election campaign.”