The Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (CoGTA), under the leadership of IFP leader Velenkosini Hlabisa, has spent over R10-million since the seventh administration resumed its duties in July 2024.
Hlabisa spent R3 462 238.03 on domestic and international travel, while his deputy ministers Dickson Masemola and Zolile Burns-Ncamashe spent R2 620 586.26 and R3 959 611.60, respectively, according to the ministry’s parliamentary response.
The response stated that among other things, they had visited disaster areas, travelled for ministerial engagements with municipalities and traditional leaders, and travelled to Cape Town for cabinet and parliamentary work.
The department noted that they embarked on at least seven international trips.
These include China for the 2024 China International Friendship with Foreign Countries Conference, Brazil for the G20 disaster risk reduction working group ministerial meeting, and Zimbabwe for the SADC ministers responsible for disaster risk management and roundtable meetings on el nino/la nina in the country.
While some of these trips were for domestic obligations, the majority of the money was spent on international travel, according to ActionSA MP Alan Beesley.
Mantashe’s R2-million seems modest
Given the absence of an itemised breakdown in the response, Beesley questioned whether these expensive trips were justified.
The figures, he said, come amid wider worries about government wastefulness because they also showed that minister Gwede Mantashe spent almost R2-million on what seemed to be upscale international travel and lodging.
Beesley said compared to CoGTA’s expensive travel bill, the R2-million seems modest.
“In this apparent obsession with overseas travel, minister Hlabisa would do well to remember that many of South Africa’s 257 municipalities languish in abject dereliction while he and his lieutenants jet-set across the globe,” Beesley said.
“Our municipalities are struggling to make ends meet either through financial mismanagement of their own doing or through the glaring lack of resources, which this staggering travel bill would have gone some way to alleviating.”
Beesley pointed out that the government of national unity has not been able to depart from the patterns of the past government and accused Hlabisa of replicating the negative behaviours of his predecessors.
