President Jacob Zuma presides over one of the most bloated Cabinets in the world with 35 ministers and 37 deputy ministers – a total of 74 ministers and their deputies. This is fertile ground for very costly ANC-style cadre deployment extravagance.

The negative consequences of this ill-considered massive executive structure are there for all to see: an astronomical public service wage bill that grows every year.

Given the latest 7 percent wage increase, the price-tag is set to balloon to around R500 billion a year for about 1.3 million public servants.

However, there is very little to show for this huge expenditure as productivity continues to deteriorate resulting in ever-increasing service delivery protests from angry, frustrated communities around the country.

The DA believes that the President can abolish a third of the Ministries and save the country billions of Rand.

The President is also among the highest paid presidents and prime ministers in the world with a salary package of just over R3 million a year.

This budget provides R3.1 million for the salary of the President and R2.6 million for the salary of the Deputy President for this financial year. These amounts are set to rise to R3.3 million and R2.8 million in 2016/17 and to R3.4 million and R2.9 million in 2017/18, respectively.

A whopping R94.4 million has been allocated for travel and subsistence for the President and the Deputy President for the financial year. These amounts increase to R110.4 million in 2015/16 and to R118.3 in 2016/17.

These costs are far too high and very hard to justify in the face of the huge and clearly unsustainable public sector wage bill.

In a country with more than 8 million unemployed people and millions of citizens and foreign nationals who reportedly go to bed hungry every night, people would expect the President to be more than sensitive about how budgets allocated to this Vote are employed.

Regrettably, this is not always the case.

President Zuma does not seem to appreciate the very dire financial constraints under which the South African economy is labouring. Consequently, he is employing every trick in the book to avoid the consequences for the personal benefits he accrued at his private residence at Nkandla.

The President seems to have convinced himself that it is OK for the state to spend R250 million on his private home as if National Treasury is a bottomless pit of money; a fat piggy bank for his personal use.

Nkandla is conspicuous consumption of the worst kind, and is criminally irresponsible.

This wanton waste of money is grossly unfair on the hard-pressed tax payers and the millions of poor, jobless and homeless people of this country.

Recently, the President again showed his apparent callousness regarding the care-free use of state money when the presidential jet, Inkwazi, developed a technical fault on his latest trip to Russia.

No expense was spared to get the President home:

    A Boeing Business Jet was routed from Dubai to Moscow to fly the President to Pretoria but the plane was not used;
    A Bombardier Challenger 605, which was based in Moscow, was eventually used to transport the President to Pretoria; and
    Ministers and officials, stranded in the city, had to use commercial flights from Moscow to Johannesburg.

Meanwhile, Inkwazi made it home safely after just an additional fuel stop on the way back to South Africa.

This trip has probably cost the country hundreds of thousands of Rand, if not millions of Rand, in fruitless and wasteful expenditure.

The DA has asked parliamentary questions in this regard and we keenly await the President’s response.

However, given the President’s track record when it comes to spending the nation’s resources, I do not believe this is something he will be worried about. After all, it’s the state’s money that is being squandered.

Such extravagance is grossly unfair on the poor people of this country.

Consequently, the DA wonders how much of the R516.1 million appropriated for this Budget Vote will end up as fruitless and wasteful expenditure by the end of the financial year.

We would also like to know why the President seems to have developed a keen taste for Russian cuisine, given the number of his visits to that country in recent months.

Meanwhile, Parliament has 40 budget votes to consider during these EPCs. Two Ministers are the executive authorities for six of them simply because there are so many; a direct consequence of the large number of Ministries:

Minister in the Presidency for Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation is the executive authority for Votes 1, 8 and 12; and the Minister of Justice and Correctional Services is responsible for Votes 18, 21 and 22.

This clustering has impacted negatively on parliament’s portfolio committee oversight mechanism through the formation of hybrid portfolio committees. We now know through experience that this arrangement puts unnecessary constraints on the oversight capabilities of MPs who are members of these committees.

This is the case for MPs who serve on the portfolio committee for Public Service and Administration as well as Performance Monitoring and Evaluation.

This situation is untenable and must be reviewed.

The budget shows that R64.3 million has been set aside for support services to the President for this financial year, increasing to R75.8 million in 2016/17. For the Deputy President, the amounts are R51.6 million and R60.1 million, respectively.

Thus, for this financial year, R115.9 million has been allocated to support the President and the Deputy President.

While support services are essential to the running of the offices of the President and Deputy President, more stringent budgeting and reductions wherever possible should be made to prevent exorbitant and unnecessary extravagance.

This ANC-dominated Parliament, as has been the case in previous parliaments, will subsequently rubberstamp the budget allocations and the wanton spending can continue at the pleasure of the President.

This, Honourable Members, is grossly unfair on the millions of South Africans who have to wallow daily in joblessness, homelessness and helplessness.

However, the people of South Africa should never lose hope; the DA is on the march and will stop this rot and set things right when we take over the government of this country. Time is of the essence!

Honourable Chair, there are some ANC members in this House who seem to believe that members of the DA are committing a crime when we raise questions about the very serious national problem that is Nkandla.

They seem to labour under a psychopathic fixation to protect President Zuma from accountability at all costs.

Well, I have got news for them: Holding the President and his executive accountable is our job and responsibility. The voters of this country expect that of us.

Nkandla will not go away until the issue is resolved to the satisfaction of the majority of the people of this country.

The ill-advised people will fail in their misguided attempts to defend the indefensible.

Their shameful and irrational attempts to vilify and discredit the Public Protector and her office will fail. On Nkandla, as I have said before: The buck stops with President Zuma!