As the elections approach, the money being poured into SA politics is increasing - with the major beneficiaries being some of the political newcomers.

Newer political parties are the flavour of the moment for funders as the elections approach.

This is the takeaway from the latest tranche of political party funding disclosures released by the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) on Thursday.

Cumulatively, three parties established less than four years ago - Rise Mzansi, ActionSA and Build One South Africa (Bosa) - raked in close to R40-million in donations from 1 October to 31 December 2023.

Of these, the biggest winner by some distance was Songezo Zibi's Rise Mzansi, which attracted some R16.7-million despite being currently untested electorally. The lion's share of this funding came from a familiar figure within the South African political funding ecosystem: Rebecca Oppenheimer, one of the heirs to the family mining fortune, who together with her siblings and mother has been a major player in the funding of opposition parties. Oppenheimer gave Zibi's outfit the maximum permitted donation within a financial year - R15-million.

Sister Victoria Freudenheim once again chose to boost the books of Herman Mashaba's ActionSA, contributing R7,486,200. With her was ActionSA's funder-in-chief from the start, online gambling mogul Martin Moshal, donating R5-million. A number of other smaller donations brought ActionSA's haul during this period to R13,912,450.

Moshal...