Ministerial Vehicles

There has been a lot of talk in the past few weeks about South African ministers spending exorbitant amounts of money on very expensive cars to shuttle them around from their homes to parliamentary meetings in both Pretoria and Cape Town.

As an example, General Nyanda, the Minister of Communications spent over two million rand on two different vehicles, one for when he is in Pretoria and one for when he is in Cape Town. Basic Education Minister, Angie Motshegha, did the exact same thing this week when she bought over a million rands worth of cars to replace her current vehicles. The only reason Sbu Ndebele gave back the Mercedes S600 that he was given as a present was because he would be able to get an even better car through government car policies. Now the thing is, despite the outcry about Nyanda spending such a ridiculous amount of money on a car, he has done absolutely nothing wrong. The rules quite strictly state at what age and mileage a government car should be replaced and what value a vehicle can be replaced with. The question is though: shouldn’t we be changing the rules rather than reviling the ministers?

Here’s the reality about South Africa: We’ve got a huge unemployment problem, issues with the global recession and a wide range of other social and economic problems. Considering that there are sixteen ministers in this new government surely they could take a step down in car size and cut their costs in half? If every ministry bought a 5-series BMW rather than a fully decked out 7-Series or a new E-Class Mercedes as opposed to a top of the range S-Class we could save a whopping sixteen million rand. Now that money could be used for education, social grants, new businesses, housing and other infrastructure projects like roads. I’d rather that money be given to someone like Eskom to avoid their raising of prices that poorer members of our country cannot afford to pay for. If the rules were that national ministers were only allowed a five hundred thousand rand vehicle then deputy ministers and local ministers would have to spend less as well, possibly only affording them a 3-Series BMW or *shock* a VW or Toyota. Lets be realistic, if I had the option of where to put my tax money, it wouldn’t be towards someone I didn’t even vote for to drive a ridiculously expensive car.

Other financial benefits include a lowered cost in insurance and lowered monthly petrol bills and if everyone got bumped down one level in size (say from 7-series to 5-series) then we’d save literally millions every year that could be used very wisely. Not only would we have more money but from a green perspective, we’d be cutting down on carbon emissions and pollution.

The situation seems obvious here: ministers deserve decent cars (they work hard and have worked hard to get to where they are) but only within reason. A car over half a million is automatically exorbitant and unnecessary. If anything, there should be a rewards system based on work done where a minister gets a reward of an expensive car depending on how successful their ministry is over a certain time period.

South African Ministers, send your current vehicles back and buy a reasonably sized vehicle and sleep safe in the fact that your “sacrifice” helped to feed or education a fellow South African.

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