Welcome!
Welcome to the new DA@Work, a weekly newsletter keeping you in touch with the hard work being done to create an Open, Opportunity Society for All in South Africa.
In this edition of DA@Work:
Call to Action
Quote of the Week
Top Story
In other news
Did you know?
Call to Action
This coming Saturday (24 July), the opening of the DA’s Federal Congress will be broadcast live on national television by both the SABC and e.tv. Each broadcast will focus on DA Leader Helen Zille’s opening address, which starts just after 10h30 on Saturday morning. The public broadcaster will carry the speech live on SABC 2.
Quote of the Week
“We must remember that former President Nelson Mandela was a constitutionalist. He believed, in his own words, that the Constitution was a “sacred covenant”. Like all true democrats, Mandela knew that real liberation requires the powerful to be bound by a constitution that limits their power. Without his leadership, our nation’s founding compact – which puts power in the hands of the people instead of the politicians – would never have emerged.”
Helen Zille in her recent SA Today Newsletter, ‘We must honour Mandela by upholding his values’
Top Story
Wasteful Expenditure: ANC spends R1.5-billion on itself, not the poor
A year had passed since the Democratic Alliance (DA) first set up a Wasteful Expenditure Monitor to track wasteful and fruitless spending by the ANC administration.
Lindiwe Mazibuko MP, DA National Spokesperson, in a recent press conference said that ANC Ministers, Deputy Ministers and the departments and entities that report to them, had spent close to R 1.5 billion on unnecessary items such as luxury cars, prolonged stays in five-star hotels, tickets to major sporting events, self-congratulatory advertising, and lavish parties at top-end restaurants.
Mazibuko pointed out that this kind of spending represented a gross misallocation of public funds and brought no benefits to the South African people.
Where the DA governs, austerity measures have been implemented to ensure that funds are not spent wastefully, and reflect our people-centered policy goals, said Mazibuko.
Read more...
In other news
Free State energy crisis: DA meets with Public Protector
David Ross MP, Shadow Deputy Minister of Energy, recently met with the Public Protector’s office to determine what measures were being put in place to prevent the disconnection of electricity supplies by Eskom to 11 Free State Municipalities, scheduled for this week.
The DA had lodged a complaint with the Public Protector on July 7th, when we uncovered the impending cut-off - which we later found out was due to ANC-run municipalities being in arrears to Eskom, in excess of R100 million.
The DA will continue to monitor this situation closely and liaise with residents over an electricity cut-off that could effect 54 towns and up to one million people in the Free State. "We must keep the lights on," concluded Ross.
Read more...
Did you know?
With regards to wasteful spending:
• The national department with the highest wasteful expenditure bill - Department of Public Works which has spent approximately R 99 million.
• The most wasteful provincial government - the ANC’s KwaZulu-Natal Provincial Government, which spent R 120.5 million on various items
• The biggest-spending single state-owned enterprise - the SABC which wasted R 23 million on unnecessary rented space and a propaganda video praising President Jacob Zuma.
• Minister of Defence Lindiwe Sisulu is responsible for the biggest expenditure on cars since the Wasteful Expenditure Monitor’s last report in April: approximately R 7 million for a fleet of four Mercedes-Benz E-class cars.
• Entities reporting to Minister of Transport S’bu Ndebele recorded the largest amount spent on World Cup tickets - R 20 million
• Minister Ndebele was also responsible for the most expensive single item of self-congratulatory advertising at a total cost of R 1.2 million. Each newspaper insert include no less than 27 full-colour photographs of the Minister himself. What was the supplement supposed to achieve? We're not entirely sure.
Helen Zille and team
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