By Annisa Essack
28:03:2022

South Africans face daily struggles as they desperately struggle to survive in a depressed economy, exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown.

But it seems that Cabinet ministers have not been affected by the situation. It emerged in parliament that the government had splurged on 24 luxury vehicles for 17 ministers and deputy ministers.

Leon Schreiber, the DA spokesperson for Public Service and Administration, spoke to Radio Islam International, shedding light on the situation.

With the enormous amounts spent on vehicles, an important question was the Treasury’s threshold regarding the regulations and thresholds for purchasing new cars. According to Mr Schreiber, the ministerial handbook was updated only after a protracted battle from the DA in November 2019 to include a threshold of R 700 000 per vehicle. The Minister of Finance is allowed to change the threshold annually.

However, 11 vehicles were purchased when the new regulations came into force over the threshold.

Senior ministers like Joe Paahla, Fikile Mbalula, and some deputy ministers purchased luxury vehicles when businesses were forced to close their doors, unemployment reached record high levels, and South Africans struggled to put food on the table. Schreiber provided an example of unnecessary spending in the case of the former Minister of Human Settlement and her deputy, who each purchased an Audi S8 Supercar valued at R1.5 million each.

The ministerial handbook says that a vehicle can only be replaced when it has 120 000 km on the clock or is older than five years. The DA is calling for an investigation to check if vehicles purchased by these ministers and other senior members of parliament were purchased according to these rules.

He further explained that when a Cabinet reshuffle takes place, new ministers and deputy ministers procure new cars, increasing the expenditure drastically.

Schreiber says it is the “old question of legality versus ethics,” as he believes that not all departments would have complied with regulations. More importantly, purchasing these luxury vehicles occurred when the country faced economic hardship due to the pandemic and lockdown.

He also raised the issue of fuel and maintenance costs that were run up during the hard lockdown by ministers, which amounted to more than a million rands, at a time when little travelling was done.

Schreiber says that the lesson for South Africans “should not be surprised when a government doesn’t actually lower the cost of living or food prices or fuel prices because they actually don’t pay for it. They don’t know how bad the situation is from behind the luxury of their Audi S8.”

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