The MK Party’s R70 Million Is Still Missing. Zuma Froze the Accounts.
On 23 July 2026, Jacob Zuma revoked every signing authority on the MK Party’s bank accounts and appointed himself the party’s accounting officer. 9 months earlier, the party’s own parliamentary caucus had asked him to order a forensic investigation into more than R70 million they said could not be accounted for. That investigation has still not been announced. The money at the centre of it is public money, paid by Parliament to run constituency offices for voters.
The money belongs to the public
Parliament pays every member an allowance to run a constituency office. The Mail and Guardian reported that the allocation works out to close to R100,000 a month for each MP.
The MK Party holds 58 seats in the National Assembly and 5 in the National Council of Provinces, which puts the party in the region of R6.3 million a month. The office is funded because it belongs to the public, and the member is the one who has to account for how the money is used.
The party’s own MPs asked first
In November 2025, the Mail and Guardian reported that the MK Party’s parliamentary caucus had met and resolved to write to Zuma and to second deputy president Tony Yengeni, asking for a forensic investigation into money siphoned out of the party.
One senior party member set out the scale of it. He said, ours has gone over R70 million, and it’s unaccounted for.
The same reporting described the money leaving through inflated salaries, accommodation, security costs and travel agencies. The people raising the alarm were not opponents of the party. They sat in Zuma’s own caucus, and the offices they were asking about serve the communities that voted for them.
9 months on, no forensic audit has been announced.
A party that could not settle the rent
While that request went unanswered, the finances came apart in public view.
News24 reported that the party inherited an estimated R28 million in debt, acknowledged by former treasurer-general Mpiyakhe Limba before his dismissal in January 2026 and his replacement by Brian Molefe. In June 2026, News24 reported on leaked internal letters setting out the position, describing it as pitiful.
Molefe circulated a memo that same month suspending all travel, accommodation, car hire and venue hire until 26 July so that his office could work through the finances, and provincial election task teams were told their monthly allowances would be paid late.
Sunday World reported that the landlord of the party’s Polokwane office sent a scathing letter over unpaid rent, and that the owners of a proposed national headquarters in Johannesburg withdrew the lease offer after their bankers advised them against renting to the MK Party.
The same publication reported an invoice of R336,000 from a private security company for the protection of the secretary-general in April 2026, covering two protectors, a reliever, two rifles, two handguns and a vehicle.
The MK Party rejected that report. Party spokesperson Sifiso Mahlangu said it was riddled with innuendo and speculation, and the party instructed its lawyers to demand a retraction and threatened legal action.
What the freeze does, and what it does not do
On 23 July 2026, Zuma wrote to party structures from national level down to regional level, withdrawing every signing authority on the party’s bank accounts with immediate effect. The instruction applied to every official regardless of rank, including the treasurer-general and the secretary-general. He signed in his capacity as president and accounting officer, a designation he applied to himself.
On 28 July the party dissolved its Presidential Task Team and replaced it with a Strategic Presidential Team holding the highest decision-making authority over administration, finances, electoral strategy and organisational cohesion.
Zuma has ruled out internal party elections on the argument that they are vulnerable to people with money, and has said he will personally select senior candidates for the local government elections. His daughter Duduzile Zuma-Sambudla was expelled from the party in June 2026.
Freezing an account stops money going out. It does not establish where the previous R70 million went. Those are separate exercises, and only one of them has taken place.
The freeze also locked out the treasurer-general Zuma had appointed 6 months earlier. Every route to an independent answer about the missing money now runs through one person, who is the same person the caucus wrote to when it asked for the audit.
The founder’s claim, and the court record
Jabulani Khumalo registered the MK Party with the Electoral Commission in September 2023. Speaking to Biznews, he said Zuma endorsed the party while still an ANC member, waited until the party started drawing money, and then took it off him. He said you cannot divorce Zuma from money, and said the plan is to draw as much money out of the party as possible before collapsing or deregistering it.
Those are claims, and one part of his account does not survive checking. Khumalo said the Electoral Court has dragged its feet on his complaint that his signature was forged.
The Electoral Court heard the matter and dismissed it in June 2024, with Judge Lebogang Modiba finding his arguments frivolous and his version of events contradictory. He lost the appeal in October 2024, by News24’s count his fourth defeat in court. The Western Cape High Court struck a further application off the roll for lack of urgency. In September 2024 the Gauteng High Court ordered his name removed as a signatory on the party’s bank account.
Khumalo has a personal interest in this story and he has the litigation history wrong. What he describes is nevertheless being alleged separately by MK Party MPs who have nothing to gain from supporting him, which is the part of the story that stands whether or not Khumalo is believed.
The gap in the law
The Political Party Funding Act governs private donations and disclosure. It sets thresholds and caps, and it gives nobody the power to recover constituency allowances that were paid over and never accounted for.
The disclosure rules have also moved against anyone trying to follow the money. The threshold for declaring a donation was lifted from R100,000 to R200,000, and the annual cap on what a single donor may give rose from R15 million to R30 million.
A party can therefore be the third largest in the country, have its own MPs say R70 million of public money cannot be accounted for, and face no consequence beyond unfavourable coverage. Local government elections are set for 4 November 2026, and the allowance continues to be paid every month.
Parliament has paid this allowance to the MK Party every month for more than 2 years. Its own members say R70 million of it cannot be accounted for. The question that has not been asked is when Parliament last called for a receipt.
