In his 2000 budget speech the Minister of Finance, Trevor Manuel, indicated by means of the significant addition of section 30 to the Income Tax Act that the Government had heeded some prolonged and intensive lobbying by the large numbers of NGOs dealing with public benefit activities. Many of these had been around for years, but during the final years of the apartheid regime and well into the change to democratic rule even more had sprung up to address numerous needs in the community.
Their problem was that, with the end of apartheid, South Africa ceased to be the flavour of the month for many foreign donors, with the result that the NGOs found themselves financially strapped. They then sought assistance from the government by seeking tax incentives for donors to such entities. To make matters worse, many NGOs did not qualify for exemption as taxpayers under any of the exemptions afforded in the Act to certain non-profit-making bodies.
