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In response to a Democratic Alliance (DA) parliamentary question, the Minister of International Relations has admitted that R11.7 million was spent on a "cancellation fee for reserved heads of state accommodation" by the Department of International Relations and Cooperation, for an "African Diaspora Summit". The conference was postponed until further notice; no reason for this was provided in the reply.

The R11.7 million wasted on this event brings the ANC government's total wasteful expenditure, as tracked by our wasteful expenditure monitor, to R617-million.

This astronomical figure is only the cancellation fee, and is presumably only a certain percentage of what the total cost would have been. Added to this is the fact that the department plans to hold this event again, at an additional exorbitant cost to the South African public.

Even if the cancellation fee accounts for the full cost of the conference, questions need to be asked about the cost of accommodation associated with this particular summit. In August 2008 a R13-million SADC summit included R4,1 million spent on the accommodation for 15 heads of state over a 10 day period. This equates to R273 000 per guest, or R27 000 per guest per night. In May 2009 R7,1 million was spent on one night's accommodation for heads of state attending President Jacob Zuma's inauguration event (91 guests at R78 000 per guest per night). Even if 15 heads of state were invited to the African Diaspora Summit - and the Department of International Relations has not been forthcoming in response to our attempts to ascertain how many heads of state were invited - then more than R780 000 would have been spent per guest, or just under R200 000 per guest per night over a 4 night period.

How the department could possibly justify this wasteful expenditure is unclear. Last week the DA pointed out that the International Relations department has spent R138-million on hotel accommodation in 2008/2009, which represents a 36% increase year on year - this kind of rampant misspending demonstrates why we are presented with the current state of affairs. Clearly now serious questions must be asked about the competency of the department and its ability to manage finances, especially during the global financial crisis when financial prudence was being preached from every corner of our country and the world at large.
I will now be submitting parliamentary questions to investigate this matter further. We need to know what the purpose of an African Diaspora summit is, what the department was aiming to achieve with the summit, and who was invited. More to the point, we need to know how this event was going to benefit South Africans, and why the event was cancelled at such an enormous cost.