We cannot afford another year of ‘bling before books'

In the last week of July 2009 the Democratic Alliance launched its Wasteful Expenditure Monitor, which is designed to track wasteful and fruitless expenditure by the ANC executive. What we could not have expected is that less than six months later, an enormous R605-million of wasteful and fruitless ANC spending has been clocked up on our monitor. This equates to roughly R3.6-million of wasteful spending every day, or R2 531 every minute, that the ANC is in office. Now, with matric pass rates falling for a sixth successive year, one cannot help but ask whether the extent of moral decay within the ANC leadership - this culture of ‘bling before books' - has ramifications for our country's long term economic development that will take decades to reverse.

Consider this: the R605 million tracked so far by our monitor could have employed close to 4 700 teachers for a year, or bought about 5 million school books. Instead, hundreds of millions of rands are being frittered away on private jets, five star hotel stays and luxury cars.

So at the beginning of 2010, the question I would ask the ANC leadership is this: will they heed the nation's calls not to waste further public funds on frivolous luxuries, and instead turn their focus towards service delivery, poverty alleviation, education, crime fighting and the delivery of much needed services? Generous by nature, South Africans have been willing to give the Zuma administration a chance to prove itself. But they will not sit by idly if rampant misspending continues.

The ministers now have their cars, they have their mansions, and they have had their parties. We would demand them, now, to focus on the task at hand, and knuckle down to business.

These are the last two items of wasteful expenditure that we have added to our Wasteful Expenditure Monitor since it was last updated:

• It emerged last month that the KwaZulu-Natal government's department of economic development and tourism has wasted an additional R2.9-million on a theatre production, in much the same way as the Department of Housing did towards the end of last year.
• A parliamentary reply received last month indicated that Minister of Sports and Recreation, Mr Makhenkesi Stofile, decided to celebrate the delivery of his budget speech with a cocktail dinner party costing R104 838. With only 100 attendees, this results in a cost of R1000 a head per guest. The decision to host a party to celebrate no achievements and nothing more than an announcement is absurd.

We will keep the Monitor updated throughout 2010 as we continue to ask tough questions and hold ministers to account for any reckless spending of public funds. We will also continue to call on government departments and members of the executive to do the right thing and, following the example of the DA provincial government in the Western Cape, implement measures to monitor and cut back on unnecessary government spending.

Statement issued by Athol Trollip, MP, Democratic Alliance parliamentary leader, January 10 2009

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