All aboard the gravy plane

Imagine being handed R4m for five international trips. Not bad, right?

That’s precisely what health minister Aaron Motsoaledi has spent in the eight months since taking office last year, as he admitted in response to parliamentary questions from ActionSA.

Well, not Motsoaledi alone; he’s travelled with an entourage of two or three lucky public servants. Not bad work if you can get it.

All told, that’s R1.7m for New York, R450,000 for Moscow, R791,000 for Rio, R435,000 for Brazzaville, and R697,000 for Davos.

It’s a revealing insight into what sort of spending he deems appropriate, given his pledge that South Africa is “actively pursuing” National Health Insurance (NHI), which will place the country’s entire health spending in a single state-owned fund, overseen by a board he will appoint.

To put his travel costs in perspective, that amount of money would cover the cost of the medication (not the full treatment costs) for about 6,460 HIV-positive people for one year. Or HIV prophylaxis (PrEP) for about 5,200 at-risk people. It’s a salient point, given the Trump administration pulling its HIV funding programme, Pepfar

Now, arguably, these trips were necessary. They included the G20 and Brics health ministers’ summits, and the UN General Assembly, where Motsoaledi and his crew were part of President Cyril Ramaphosa’s five-strong ministerial entourage. Though it’s not exactly clear what Motsoaledi did there – and he ignored Currency’s question on this.

But it’s the apparent profligacy that bites, particularly from the man who’ll have an outsize role in NHI. Perception matters, and one can’t help but wonder if this is to be the template for spending. It’s not a good look.

Take the R1.7m New York jaunt. Just the air fare was a whopping R863,000 for Motsoaledi and his three aides. At this price, you’d have to assume it was, at worst, business class all the way – for his team too, if the numbers are to add up. Though again, Motsoaledi’s media team refused to answer questions on this score. 

Incidentally, Google Flights has four business-class tickets on the most direct (though not the cheapest) flight to New York in time for the General Assembly this September at a total of R686,700. Just saying.

Now the Ministerial Handbook – a hand-waving exercise at curbing executive excess – allows ministers to travel business class. But they must, it says, look for “the most cost-effective, direct or convenient route” with due regard for “time constraints and their wellbeing”.

In other words, they don’t have to take the cheapest available flight if it will be too lengthy or negatively affect their delicate sensibilities. (There is an argument to be made for business class if you’re participating in a conference the day after a long-haul flight. But the entourage?)

Then there’s the accommodation. The minister and his support staff spent R654,000 for 10 days in New York.

Again, the Ministerial Handbook stipulates that expenses should be kept as low as possible, but it allows for “making use of hotels which suit the status of members”. That apparently requires “a five-star graded hotel or the equivalent of South African five-star graded hotel”. 

Presumably that very status would also make it unbecoming for a minister to stay in the same sort of digs as his staff (Motsoaledi didn’t say). So let’s assume he or she would commandeer something snazzier, like a suite, while the aides languish in the bowels of the, ahem, five-star establishment. 

New York, New York

Now, imagine, if you will, you were a dignitary visiting New York for the General Assembly this year. You and your entourage of three have, say, R654,000 to burn for 10 nights’ stay. What can you get?

Bear in mind that the main event is the high-level debate, running for nine days from September 23, so prices shoot up during this period. Hotels in the immediate vicinity of the UN – think the Hilton Millennium 1 UN Plaza – will be beyond your budget.

But you could opt for 10 nights in the five-star Virgin New York, just 3km from the UN HQ. Current prices for that high-demand period, as per the Virgin website, come in at a lowly R11,753 a night for your three aides, assuming they bunk in the cheapest Sky Chamber.

That would leave you with enough dosh to hit the Sky Grand Chamber Suite, complete with Smeg fridge, a pantry (where you can “prepare a craft cocktail”), dressing room, smart shower, Red Flower holistic bath and hair-care products, a sleeping lounge with hybrid bed “that allows for multidimensional lounging”, smart TV, etc, etc, etc. Yours for just R18,776 a night.

Taxes and fees included, that’s a grand total of R650,273 for the four of you for 10 days – assuming you’re there for the entire high-level debate. So sneaking in with some change to spare.

However, if you were more mindful of money, you could stay at the Hyatt’s The Time New York. At 4.5 stars, it’s surely a South African five-star equivalent – and it’s slightly closer to the General Assembly action, too. It comes with queen rooms for your aides; and for you, a suite with two 40” flat-screen TVs, Argon bath amenities, Frette bathrobes, gourmet mini bar … 

That would come in at a rough R429,000 for the four of you, fees and taxes inclusive – so R220,000 below budget. And that’s without looking hard.

Which goes to show you can tighten your belt – even if you’re not going to compromise your five-star style. 

Could have been an email

Motsoaledi’s travel spend is indicative of cabinet at large. His R4.1m is just less than 10% of the R47.2m total that 16 ministers and their entourages have clocked up in international travel since they took office in July. (Deputy ministers and other departmental travel not included.) 

This emerges from responses to parliamentary questions from ActionSA, which has been asking ministers about their travel costs since December – so the figure may be even higher for some departments now.

That’s just 16 of 32 ministries. Exclude the presidency and ministry of international relations and co-operation, where you expect monster travel bills, and you can extrapolate travel to about R369,000 per ministry per month. Taken over a year for 30 ministries, that comes to a sky-high R132.8m.

That’s assuming the remaining ministers don’t behave like champagne communist Blade Nzimande. The minister of science, innovation and technology is in the top three travel spenders, with seven trips at a not-insubstantial R5.5m, averaging R788,000 per trip. 

Also in the R5m-plus club is minister for planning, monitoring and evaluation Maropene Ramokgopa, who tops the table at R5.7m for six trips.

Electricity and energy minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa didn’t do too badly either, with eight trips costing R5.6m. Astonishingly, one of those was a two-day, R321,000 jaunt to Qatar to “deliver a letter of invitation from HE Mr Cyril Ramaphosa, President of the Republic of South Africa, to HH Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani to undertake [a] state visit to South Africa”. 

Delivering a letter, it seems, required two aides. For a meeting that could have been an email. 

Forestry, fisheries and environment minister Dion George is headed for the R5m club too, with six trips totalling R4.7m. Human settlements’ Mmamoloko Kubayi took a total three trips for R4m (her average came in tops at R1.3m per trip). While higher education and training minister Nobuhle Nkabane’s three trips came in at a restrained R3.9m (though an average of R1.3m). 

While you might expect a home affairs minister to be relatively housebound, Leon Schreiber’s R559,222 looks positively ascetic in comparison. Ditto finance minister Enoch Godongwana’s two trips for R461,786. Then there’s correctional services’ Pieter Groenewald, who seems to have spent zero on international travel, if his response on the Parliamentary Monitoring Group website is anything to go by.

Of course, the cabinet’s R47.2m splurge on international travel is a drop in the ocean. As ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula so brashly explained recently, reducing ministers’ perks would hardly be enough to save the strapped budget. 

And you could argue that corporate CEOs easily drop as much when they flit abroad – but, first, they are heading private companies, and, second, if their companies were languishing in the financial doldrums, you can be sure their shareholders wouldn’t be chuffed. 

Taxing schedules

So what does dropping R1m or R5m on travel say to spending priorities in a country where 22c of very rand collected is spent servicing debt? What does it say about the necessity to raise VAT, rather than tighten belts?

Fair play, of course, if there were something to show for these trips, some return on this investment. But the value is seldom made clear to the person footing the bill (you and me). 

Like, for instance, Ramokgopa playing postman in Qatar. Or Nzimande’s attendance at the “Annual Conference on Transforming Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths in Africa”, which sounds like an excuse for dour academics to trade their robes for lukewarm finger food and a sad mirror ball on closing night.

In short, what no-one seems to have told our cabinet is that just because the Ministerial Handbook says you can take expensive business class flights and stay in five-star accommodation doesn’t mean you have to. And just because the option of travel is open to you, doesn’t mean it’s a necessity.

It shows the most metallic of tin ears when you’re living large around the world while the people in your country – the country itself – remain deeply mired in financial straits.