The South African Communist Party (SACP) faces court action or debt collectors over its failure to pay Port Elizabeth’s Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University R1,6-million for hosting its congress last year.
The university has given the SACP until next week to sign a settlement arrangement.
The debt, incurred when the party held its conference on the Port Elizabeth campus in July last year, was supposed to have been paid in full last October.
The university’s spokesperson, Roslyn Baatjie, warned that if the SACP failed to sign the proposed settlement deal, the university would consider taking the matter to court or to debt collectors.
The university threatened to hand the SACP over to a debt-collecting agency when it failed to pay by last October, but relented after the party promised to cough up. The deadline for payment was pushed to November 30.
Baatjie said the party had since paid R600 000. She said the SACP had not explained its failure to pay the balance, despite being sent letters of demand.
SACP spokesperson Malesela Maleka refused to comment, saying this was an ”internal financial matter of the party”. ”The SACP is aware of a concerted effort by some disgruntled elements within and outside the SACP who are fully collaborating with the Mail & Guardian to sustain a negative public image of the SACP insofar as our finances are concerned,” Malesela said.
The SACP has been having financial problems since the Nineties. Last year they were sitting with a R1,5-million tax bill, were struggling to pay salaries and creditors were ”knocking on its doors”. This is according to a report compiled by suspended treasurer Phillip Dexter.
He had prepared the report to be presented to the conference held at the university, but he was suspended before it took place.
A central committee member said the party is facing financial problems: ”The truth is that we are struggling as an organisation. Sponsors promised to give us money, but they backed off at the last minute.”
”I can tell you, though, from my many years in the SACP, where I also was on the finance committee for a couple of years in the late Nineties, that the SACP’s finances have always been in a state of crisis— but no surprise there,” said a former party member.
Police are also investigating a case of fraud after businessperson Charles Modise claimed to have donated R500 000 to the party.
However, after its last central committee meeting earlier this month, the SACP said ”we have done everything in our power to get to the bottom of this matter and we can find absolutely no evidence whatsoever that Modise (currently in detention in Kimberley) ever made a donation of R500 000 to the SACP and still less that Willie Madisha passed on this amount to our general secretary, comrade Blade Nzimande”.