Publications
Partners
The Economic Freedom Fighters’ 761 councillors will forfeit 50% of their salaries for the first three months on the job to help the party service its election campaign debt.
They have also been called upon to buy vans and not sedans to use for the party’s campaign for the national elections in 2019, as well as for servicing their constituencies.
In a text from the party’s secretary general, Godrich Gardee, the party outlined conditions for councillors, including:
- Each councillor shall forfeit 50% of his salary to the organisation to pay off election costs (for three months) and thereafter a 10% levy of gross salary; and
- No one is permitted to owe the organisation this 10% levy, and provincial secretaries should ensure all councillors pay without fail.
The party is said to have incurred serious debt during its election campaign. The party had to source funds for election material all the way down to ward level because candidates and branches had no capacity to do so.
Based on the current salary scale of the lowest paid councillor – about R16 000 – the party would, in the three-month period, recover at least R24 million.
An EFF insider said the party took out a loan worth millions with Standard Bank to sustain its campaign.
“Some were even willing to forfeit their salary for a whole year, but we decided that half the salary was a better option,” the insider said.
However, one EFF councillor from Mpumalanga, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said they were unhappy with the imposed salary cut.
The councillor said it was unfair for party members, who had resigned from their jobs to take up posts as councillors, to be told to give half their salaries away.
“How do they expect us to pay our monthly debts with half a salary?”
