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The Development Bank of Southern Africa spends R2.35 million on World Cup Tickets, bringing the total spent to approximately R132.5 million.
This is the latest example of public money being used on the personal indulgences of public officials.
The DA will be submitting a question to the Minister of Finance, to ask for a copy of the report that motivated the DBSA's decision to buy tickets.





In reply to a DA parliamentary question the Minister of Finance has revealed that the Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA) spent R2 348 896.50 on 300 tickets to the FIFA World Cup. This brings the total amount spent by all public entities to date, to approximately R132.5 million. All of it is wasteful expenditure, which the DA will be including in its Wasteful Expenditure Monitor, and which currently stands at R1.3 billion.

A link to a copy of the reply can be found below.

In one of the longest, most obfuscatory and entirely unconvincing explanations yet offered by any public entity the DBSA states:

"Stakeholder management was identified as a key risk by the Board of the Development Bank of Southern Africa and as a result the Executive Committee in 2008 tasked a team to establish the status of stakeholder management within the Bank. The exercise, drawing on stakeholder analysis, marketing and public relations techniques, culminated in a report which indicated the importance and necessity of robust stakeholder engagement and communication to ensure understanding, good will and continued support of the DBSA in the execution of its mandate."

Put more simply: the DBSA thought if it bought World Cup tickets for stakeholders, they would like the Bank more.

Wrong.

People will like the Bank better if it uses the public money allocated to it, to deliver on its mandate to an excellent standard.

They won't like it more if it splurges that money on World Cup tickets, because that is not the reason why citizens pay tax. They do that to get a service delivered to them.

Ironically, the DBSA claims to understands that fact. Consider this, far simpler and to the point, sentence from the section ‘Corporate Governance'; under the ‘Corporate Philosophy' link on the DBSA website:

"By supporting principles of good corporate governance, the Bank demonstrates its commitment to the highest standards of integrity and ethical conduct in dealing with all its stakeholders."

That particular commitment seems to have been forgotten in this particular case.

I will be submitting a Parliamentary Question to the Minister of Finance, to ask for a copy of the report the DBSA cites as the justification behind its decision to buy 300 World Cup tickets. It will be interesting to see what that report actually says.