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In June 2009 President Jacob Zuma established a Ministerial Task Team to review the ministerial handbook- a process which has still not been completed. Yesterday, nearly two and a half years later, the Public Protector’s report on Police Minister Nathi Mthethwa’s extravagant hotel expenditure recommended that a stricter handbook was urgently needed.

Seven hundred and eighty eight (788) days have passed since President Zuma originally announced the Ministerial Review. He said at the time that Cabinet would “address public concerns that government is living large while citizens are feeling the pain caused by the economic downturn”.

For more than two years the South African public has been made to believe that the release of the new handbook was “imminent”, that is was “coming soon”, that it would be released “definitely before the World Cup”, and that it was at an “advanced stage”. Nine days ago, on 20 September, Minister in the Presidency Collins Chabane said the “public will know soon”.

It is now 788 days and counting, Minister.

The fact is that the delay in this review is unacceptable, and has allowed Ministers to continue their wasteful expenditure on luxuries and excesses of all kinds. The Ministerial Handbook has become a blueprint for government excess and the cover-all excuse for avoiding accountability, all at the expense of the poor. There is currently no incentive for Cabinet to complete this review, since it is the Cabinet itself which endorses and practices the waste the review is trying to stop.

The DA-run Western Cape provincial government has already put its money where its mouth is, so to speak, by rewriting its provincial ministerial handbook to cut out any excessive expenditure.

I will today write to the Minister of Public Service and Administration, Richard Baloyi, and request that he commits to a specific deadline by which the reviewed handbook should be presented to the public. Government has had more than enough time, and the continued delays and stalling are costing the South African public more and more each day.