Defence dept's financial woes exacerbated by having to respond to emergencies at short notice, Motshekga tells SCOPA
Explaining the department's repeated qualified audits, Defence Minister Angie Motshekga said it was the nature of the job to assist when called upon to protect the country's borders and its assets.
- Standing Committee on Public Accounts (SCOPA)
- Angie Motshekga
- South African National Defence Force (SANDF)
Defence Minister Angie Motshekga (left) and Deputy Defence Minister Bantu Holomisa (right) appeared before Parliament’s Standing Committee on Accounts on 18 February 2025. Picture: Parliament/Zwelethemba Kostile
CAPE TOWN - Defence Minister Angie Motshekga said that her department's financial predicament was exacerbated by having to respond to emergency situations at short notice and with no pre-approved budget.
But the chairperson of Parliament's Standing Committee on Public Accounts (SCOPA), Songezo Zibi, said it was unsustainable not to recoup the funds spent on these operations.
The department said it only received around half of the money spent on supporting the police in its illegal mining campaign, Vala Umgodi.
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Motshekga said that the extension of the deployment of soldiers to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) was also not budgeted for.
Explaining the department's repeated qualified audits, Motshekga said it was the nature of the job to assist when called upon to protect the country's borders and its assets.
These included protecting Eskom power stations, assisting in rooting out illegal miners and responding to unrest on the Mozambique border.
She said it’s proven difficult to be paid for these operations, receiving only around R150 million from the criminal asset recovery account for the illegal mining operation when it cost more than double that.
"There's no way you can say you are not going to Mozambique when things are spilling out, because you know problems in Mozambique are going to affect you as a country in terms of your own security and your well being. The majority of people who are zama zamas are foreigners."
But Zibi questioned why the budget gap was never closed.
"It cannot be that for the rest of the financial year there’s absolutely no discussion as to how it's going to be paid for and it's allowed to stay like that. It's like people think the money is going to fall from trees, and if we don't talk about it, it didn't happen."
Motshekga agreed with Zibi but said she had no solution to fixing the situation, joking that she wished she had a slush fund for these unplanned operations.