Cape Town – Parliament on Sunday rejected as "selective analysis, one-sided, and misleading allegations" that the institution spent over R11 million in organising and staging President Jacob Zuma's state-of-the-nation (Sona) address on February 9.
"Premier annual events held in Cape Town like Sona pump millions of rands into the economy of the City of Cape Town and the province of the Western Cape; a fact that is regrettably often not acknowledged by critics of Parliament," it said in a statement.
"A factual study in this regard is being conducted to expose the actual statistical economic impact including tourism, economic development, and job creation. Parliament had made a commitment over a number of years to progressively reduce expenditure on Sona through more prudent management and had been succeeding as it reached a R4m mark in 2017."
"Parliament is confident that when all bills are paid and everything reconciled it may be even far less than the target. Parliament has ensured that high quality and delivery standards of this spectacle event in its corporate events calendar are maintained and improved," the statement said.
Earlier on Sunday, Democratic Alliance chief whip John Steenhuisen said replies to parliamentary questions had revealed that this year’s Sona costs had reached an astonishing R11 million.
On February 2, secretary to Parliament Gengezi Mgidlana told media that R4 million had been budgeted for the event, Steenhuisen said.
“However, replies to written questions to the ministers of police and public works revealed that their departments spent a further R4.085 million and R2.7 million, respectively."
“The department of state security avoided answering the question, as is their habit, claiming that their enormous deployment to the event ‘came from the normal operational budget of the [State Security] Agency’. The DA will submit an application in terms of the Promotion of Access to Information Act to get a clear picture of SSA resources dedicated to the event and why.”
Adding the R204 153.60 spent on deploying 441 members of the South African National Defence Force “to maintain law and order during the opening of Parliament” reveals that this year’s Sona cost at least R10 989 188.
“This eye-watering amount could have been better spent on initiatives to create jobs, provide skills and training, or on education for young South Africans. The “hidden” cost of Sona not only revealed how much the increasing securitisation and militarisation of the event was costing South Africans; it also made a mockery of Mgidlana’s comments that Sona was “about the president and members of the public interacting with the speech being made”.
“The sad reality is that Sona is no longer accessible to ordinary members of the public; however, they are expected to stump up more and more every year for a compromised president facing a hostile Parliament. The DA would keep probing the real cost of Sona 2017 and, once calculated, reveal how many millions was spent on having “a paranoid president deliver a speech to his own caucus”, Steenhuisen said.