South Africa’s response to the threat of being greylisted by trade body FAFT is to force the registration of all non-profits with the NPO Directorate. But this notion has far-reaching — and patently unconstitutional — repercussions. By William Bird, Media Monitoring Africa

The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) describes itself as a global money-laundering and terrorist-financing watchdog. The intergovernmental body sets international standards that aim to prevent these illegal activities and the harm they cause to society. As a policy-making body, the FATF works to “generate the necessary political will to bring about national legislative and regulatory reforms in these areas”. 

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The FATF’s conclusion about South Africa’s risk posed for terrorist financing (TF) in non-profit organisations was: “South Africa has not yet done an assessment of their broader NPO sector to identify those organisations, based on their characteristics or activities, that put them at risk of TF abuse. South Africa also has no capacity to monitor or investigate NPOs identified to be at risk of TF abuse.” (See page 176)

Seems okay, but the problem is the proposed response is to force the registration of all non-profits with the NPO Directorate, which falls under the Department of Social Development. Any NPO that has tried to register with the NPO Directorate will know how difficult it is, how onerous the requirements are and how slow the whole process is.

Read the full article in the Daily Maverick: https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2022-10-09-sas-harebrained-scheme-to-register-npos-will-not-solve-terrorist-financing-concerns/