GOOD to fight R90,000 fine over hidden T-shirt donation

Brett Herron, GOOD and Rise Mzansi's joint candidate for Cape Town mayor, says they will fight a fine imposed over an undeclared donation.

The GOOD party is refusing to wear the Electoral Court's R90,000 fine over a R900,000 donation that paid for its 2021 election T-shirts.

Secretary-general Brett Herron , who is GOOD and Rise Mzansi's joint candidate for mayor of Cape Town, said the party would seek leave to appeal the judgment, arguing the court had made several errors that affected the outcome.

"The party operates on a very modest budget and scrupulously adheres to requirements of the [Political Party Funding] act," Herron, who is also GOOD's accounting officer, the official the act makes responsible for keeping the party's funding records, said.

"The Electoral Court reached its judgment without hearing argument or evidence."

The Political Party Funding Act Herron referred to requires parties to declare every donation above R100,000.

The appeal bid comes 10 weeks before voters go to the polls in the municipal elections on November 4.

The Independent Electoral Commission took GOOD, Herron and property firm Electrox Properties to court after finding the party had failed to declare the donation.

Its case was that GOOD bought T-shirts and other campaign material from Kairos Communications in the run-up to the 2021 local government elections, that the material was delivered and used by the party, and that Kairos invoiced GOOD for it.

The money was never disclosed to the IEC and did not appear in the party's annual financial statements for that period.

GOOD and Herron opposed the application and denied taking an undisclosed donation.

The party argued the deal had been struck between its former national organiser Shaun August and Saravan Devaraj Govender, who owns Kairos.

He said the party's affidavits never explained how it had paid for the R900,000 worth of T-shirts, and offered no proof that it had.

He found there was no evidence of payment and none of any credit agreement, and that the T-shirts were therefore a donation.