ANC government’s expensive obsession with Cuban expertise is unaffordable and unacceptable

20 April 2021

The ANC government's expensive obsession with Cuban expertise is simply unaffordable and unacceptable.

It puts needless pressure on an already empty fiscus and is a slap in the face of unemployed South African experts who have more than enough expertise and are more than able to do everything that the Cubans are paid exorbitant amounts to do in our country.

This coming Thursday, 24 more Cuban engineers are expected to arrive in South Africa to assist with "water supply service delivery and related services". The Minister of Water and Sanitation, Lindiwe Sisulu, will welcome them in person.

According to the available information, they are not yet registered with the Engineering Council of South Africa (ECSA). Their qualifications do not have the accreditation required by the ECSA and, thus, they are not allowed to sign off on any plans.

Over the years, the ANC's historical ties and ideological attachment to a communist dictatorship have become a very heavy and fruitless burden on South Africa.

Ace Magashule, former Free State Premier, recently gave concrete expression to this friendship in 2015 when he appointed 37 Cuban engineers as "technical advisors" in the Free State province.

After that, service delivery in the province deteriorated at an alarming rate despite the presence of the Cuban "expertise". It came at a cost of approximately R80 million. By last year, there were only three of those engineers left in the country.

There are many similar examples. For instance, the 150 Cuban technical experts who were supposed to assist with the maintenance of defence force vehicles, which turned out to be a billion-rand failure (Network24: Tesourie bloei vir Kubane in SA: 12 June 2020).

And last year, 187 medical professionals from Cuba were brought into the country to assist with the Covid-19 pandemic, while there are thousands of unemployed medical experts locally who could have done the work.

This is clearly not about bringing expertise into the country to benefit the people, on the contrary, this is done at the expense of the country and all its people.

Issued by Wouter Wessels, FF Plus MP, 20 April 2021