ANC billed more than R100,00 for Harare flight
The ANC has to pay more than R100,000 to the department of defence for transporting its delegation to Zimbabwe on an SA Air Force (SAAF) jet, according to defence minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula.
An invoice for the flight was attached to Mapisa-Nqakula’s report to President Cyril Ramaphosa after it emerged that an ANC delegation had flown with her to Harare in the jet on September 8.
Mapisa-Nqakula had a business meeting with her Zimbabwean counterpart but was also part of the ANC delegation that met with members of the governing Zanu-PF party.
The amount to be repaid by the party was the excess of the costs the minister would have incurred on her approved trip to Zimbabwe.
According to the invoice, the cost of using the jet was R232,200. Excluding the cost for government officials takes the total cost for the ANC delegation to R105,545.46.
Ramaphosa made the report public on Wednesday. The presidency said the publication of Mapisa-Nqakula’s reports to Ramaphosa was “informed by the president’s commitment to transparency ”.
At the weekend, Ramaphosa reprimanded the minister over the saga and instructed that she take a three-month salary penalty. Her salary will be paid into the Solidarity Fund, established to tackle needs arising from the Covid-19 pandemic.
The minister took a lot of flak for transporting the ANC delegation — including secretary-general Ace Magashule and national executive committee members Gwede Mantashe, Lindiwe Zulu, Tony Yengeni and Enoch Godongwana — to Harare.
The DA, which has been calling for Ramaphosa to make the report public, said the amount invoiced to the ANC was a “gross under-calculation ”.
DA MP Kobus Marais said the party last week consulted two independent companies that were experts in the field of private international travel to request the cost of chartering an 18-seater private jet from Pretoria or Johannesburg to Harare.
The amount for the flight itself came to about R260,000.
This did not include payments for landing rights, parking fees or on-board catering, meaning the figure is much higher, Marais said.
In her report to the president, Mapisa-Nqakula said that she had obtained permission to travel internationally on an official visit. She said in hindsight “it would have been prudent to inform your office [Ramaphosa] in writing of my intention to ferry ANC national executive committee members of which I formed part to meet with ZanuPF counterparts”.
In her report, the minister said the ministerial handbook
RAMAPHOSA REPRIMANDED THE MINISTER AND INSTRUCTED THAT SHE TAKE A THREE-MONTH SALARY PENALTY
stated that air transport provided by the SAAF or any other government department may not be used by members for political party engagements, unless they were conducting official work before or after the political party engagements.
“In my understanding … I did not need additional permission to attend to party political engagements using the same SAAF flight as such has already been catered for in the ministerial handbook,” she said.
“As for the ferrying of the additional persons on the same aircraft, I am not aware if any prohibition on doing such or specific permission that ought to be sought as it is a regular occurrence in the use of the SAAF aircraft to provide for the ferrying of business persons or the like if all are travelling in the same direction as the flight being used for official purposes.”
Mapisa-Nqakula said that the delegation had to be tested for Covid-19 before departure and self-quarantine certificates were sought from the department of health.