DTI obfuscates over ticket splurge, but still responsible for unacceptable wasteful spending.
Behaviour points to stubbornness of Zuma administration to acknowledge when mistakes are made.
DA to submit further questions to DTI, asking how ticket purchases benefited South Africa.

George Orwell famously wrote "when there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink." The DTI's latest press release on its World Cup Ticket splurge is a perfect illustration of this point. It talks about "leveraging investment promotion benefits" and how its decision to spend public money "pre-dates any "government-wide "guidance" on this matter". It obfuscates, trying to distinguish between the amount the national department spent and the amount spent by those public entities that report to it. Whatever. The point is, it's public money misspent on personal indulgence. When the ANC government starts to understand that this is a problem, and putting first the people it serves, only then will it ever be able to put up a credible defence. Until then, an apology is the best course of action.

The DTI claims that it is "outrageously untrue and misleading" to say that the Department wasted R16.7-million on tickets, because they actually only wasted R4.7-million. Firstly, it is ridiculous that the DTI thinks that nearly R5-mllion wastage on tickets is somehow acceptable in a way that R16.7-million is not. Secondly, the DA has merely restated in our correspondence on this subject precisely what the minister of trade and industry stated in his response to our parliamentary question: that the DTI spent R4.7-million, while the Industrial Development Corporation, a state entity that was listed as falling under the DTI, spent R12-million.

The IDC was legally transferred to the Economic Development Ministry during June, but the Minister of Trade and Industry lists them under his department in his parliamentary reply, and the transfer only took place well after the purchase of tickets, while they were still under Trade and Industry jurisdiction.

The press have, for the most part, made the distinction between the R12-million spent by the IDC and R4.7-million spent by the DTI explicit; in instances where they have not, one could hardly claim that there is some conspiracy at play, as the DTI suggests. The fact is that the DTI and the entities falling under them spent R16.7-million of state funds, bringing total government expenditure on tickets to R130-million.

The DTI's response to this matter illustrates precisely the problem: that there is a stubbornness in the Zuma administration to acknowledge the difference between good governance and bad, and to admit when mistakes have been made. The DTI cannot claim that millions of rands spent on World Cup tickets are the best use of state funds in these difficult times, with so many pressing socioeconomic problems in our country. Moreover, the minister admitted in his reply that Industrial Development Corporation members of staff were amongst those who received tickets. How does that square with the DTI's claim yesterday that ticket purchases were designed purely to "leverage investment promotion benefits"?

The DTI's statement left the best for last. Apparently, one of the reasons why the DTI's purchase of tickets might be acceptable is because their "procurement of the tickets pre-date[d] any ‘government-wide guidance'". Yet the "guidance" that was provided was precisely that - a set of guidelines provided as a courtesy by the Treasury, outlining exactly what the law already says. But the Public Finance Management Act was already in place when the DTI bought tickets, and so whether the Treasury happened to have issued guidelines yet or not is irrelevant. Government departments are obliged to obey the laws of the land, irrespective of whether or not the Treasury has précised them.

We will submit further questions to the DTI, probing how the purchase of these tickets have tangibly benefited South Africa.