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The latest reports of millions spent on lavish Armed Forces Day celebrations, including exorbitant subsistence and travel payments of up to R70 000 per individual, alongside ongoing spending on golf days and social events - demonstrate precisely why Parliament cannot take the Department of Defence’s financial assurances at face value.

This is not an isolated incident. The Department has failed to obtain a clean audit from the Auditor-General for years, and 34% of current SIU and Hawks investigations within the security cluster relate to the Department of Defence and Military Veterans to the tune of R2.5 billion. Against this backdrop, reckless or poorly controlled spending is not merely embarrassing - it is a direct risk to operational readiness and public trust.

The DA raised these concerns during Friday’s meeting of the Joint Standing Committee on Defence, where the Minister of Defence was present for an earlier agenda item, but was excused when the Committee turned to the critical matter of the President’s employment letters authorising the imminent SANDF deployment. This was the second ANC Minister to snub the committee to provide answers to urgent deployment questions.

The DA objected to Minister Angie Motshekga’s departure, particularly given the many unanswered questions regarding the timeline, planning, command and control structures, and, most importantly, the very specific figure of R823 153 960 attached to the deployment.

This is a figure that was already presented to Parliament as early as 6 March, yet to date no detailed breakdown has been provided to justify how this amount was calculated or how it will be spent.

The Sunday revelations about excessive spending on Armed Forces Day serve as a case in point. They illustrate how easily public funds can be mismanaged when Ministers continuously fail to appear before Parliament or answer oversight questions.

The DA has therefore formally requested that the Minister of Defence and the SANDF appear before the joint meeting of the Joint Standing Committee on Defence and the Portfolio Committee on Police on Friday, 27 March, to provide a full and proper breakdown of the R823 million deployment cost, including how the amount was determined and what safeguards are in place to prevent waste or corruption.

There can be no price tag on people’s lives, but there must always be accountability for how public money is spent - especially when hundreds of millions of rand are involved and when the same Department has repeatedly failed to meet basic standards of financial governance.

Friday’s meeting must provide answers to MPs and the people waiting urgently for this deployment.

Issued by Nicholas Gotsell MP - DA NCOP Member on Security & Justice