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The Democratic Alliance (DA) believes that Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe must intervene to prevent what appears to be a coordinated cabinet-level cover up of excessive and wasteful expenditure by ministers on accommodation in luxury hotels and guest houses.

We have been concerned that ministers may be splurging huge amounts of taxpayers’ money on accommodation in luxury hotels and guest houses ever since higher education minister Blade Nzimande was caught out spending fifteen days at the Mount Nelson Hotel.

We therefore submitted parliamentary questions to each minister requesting information on the names, star rating, location and amount being spent on accommodation in hotels and guest houses between 2009 and 2011.

However, ministers now seem to be coordinating a cabinet-level cover up by refusing to properly reply to these parliamentary questions.

Minister of Water Affairs and Environmental Affairs Edna Molewa refused to reply to the parliamentary question as follows:

“I am not able to answer this question as it deals with matters that may negatively impact on my personal security and operations of the Department.”

Other minsters are now following suit and have also refused to reply to the same parliamentary question on the grounds that their “personal security” may be endangered.

Bizarrely government spin doctor-in-chief Jimmy Manyi even tried to suggest that disclosing information about ministerial stays in hotels and guest houses may result in ministers being ambushed by criminals.
The latest response, received from the Minister of Public Service and Administration, Richard Baloyi, on Friday 09 September 2011, did not even bother to reply to the parliamentary question, simply stating that:

“The minister performs functions in both international and domestic destinations, where applicable rules and regulations are applied for travel, accommodation, subsistence and incidental expenses. No detail (sic) detailed breakdown of payments will be made available. Same (sic) applies for (sic) the Deputy Minister.”

This amounts in my view to a coordinated cabinet-level cover up of details concerning ministerial accommodation in what seems to be a desperate attempt to hide excessive expenditure and wasteful expenditure on accommodation in luxury hotels and guest houses.

The fact is that there is no risk to the personal security of ministers because the parliamentary questions apply retrospectively. How is it possible that disclosing the fact that a minister spent ten days at a luxury hotel two years ago could possibly endanger a minister’s personal security?

Moreover, ministers are refusing to reply to the parliamentary questions on the grounds that the disclosure of the information “may” negatively impact on their personal security. This suggests there is an element of uncertainty and that the refusal to reply was not based on an objective threat assessment of the risk of disclosure conducted by the South African Police Service (SAPS).
There is no doubt in my mind that replies to these parliamentary questions will result in a Hotelgate-like scandal as minister and deputy minters are caught out spending excessive amounts of taxpayers’ money staying at some of the finest hotels including in South Africa.

The DA will therefore:

• submit follow-up parliamentary questions probing whether the ministers refusal to reply to the parliamentary questions was based on objective information including a threat assessment to the ministers personal security conducted by the SAPS; and

• will write to Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe, Leader of Government Business in Parliament, requesting him to intervene and force ministers to be accountable and reply to the parliamentary questions on the names, star rating, location and costs of ministerial accommodation in hotels and guest houses between 2009 and 2011.

We cannot sit back and let ministers off the hook just because they use cooked up excuses such as ‘personal security’ to avoid being properly accountable to Parliament.