2 days ago
Ntshavheni defends travel expense secrecy, claims it's a matter of ‘national security'
Jan Gerber/News24
Minister in the Presidency Khumbudzo Ntshavheni says releasing her travels publicly may compromise state security.
ActionSA accuses her of hiding spending behind a secret committee and avoiding accountability.
Ntshavheni insists she has fully accounted to Parliament's intelligence oversight committee, as required by law.
Minister in the Presidency Khumbudzo Ntshavheni has pushed back against accusations of secrecy and evasion, defending her decision to withhold travel expenditure details from the public and instead submit them to Parliament's Joint Standing Committee on Intelligence (JSCI).
Speaking at a media briefing on Thursday, discussing Cabinet meeting outcomes, Ntshavheni said that 80% of her travel was related to state security work and could not be openly disclosed without compromising national operations. She said:
'If you understand the nature of the work, 80% of my travel is travel for the work on state security.'
If we release it in public, it will compromise some of the initiatives that we are making.
Ntshavheni cited her involvement in preparatory work ahead of the African leaders' initiative visit to Ukraine during the early stages of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, saying public disclosure of such information would risk exposing sensitive operational details.
'There are meetings that I attend that we do not post on platforms at all. What we've posted is summits. It's not meetings,' she said.
'It is for that reason that the National Strategic Intelligence Act has provided for the Joint Standing Committee on Intelligence for us to fully account for those things that cannot be shared in the public domain.'
She added that the JSCI was specifically mandated to scrutinise such matters and that its members were appointed by Parliament to ensure accountability:
Unless ActionSA wants to claim that the Joint Standing Committee of Intelligence has no capacity to hold us accountable. We will not compromise national interest for political expediency.
ActionSA slams 'cloak of secrecy'
Ntshavheni's comments were in response to growing criticism from ActionSA, which accused her of dodging accountability by failing to provide a detailed breakdown of travel expenses in response to a parliamentary question posed by the party earlier this year.
The question, submitted by ActionSA MP Kgosi Letlape, requested a line-by-line disclosure of travel costs incurred by Ntshavheni, ministers and deputy ministers since the seventh administration took office, including purpose, transport, accommodation and meal costs.
In a written reply, Ntshavheni just said: 'The reply to this question is forwarded to the Joint Standing Committee on Intelligence.'
ActionSA's parliamentary chief whip, Lerato Ngobeni, blasted the response as 'outrageous' and accused the minister of hiding behind the cloak of intelligence secrecy to shield public spending from scrutiny.
'ActionSA expresses outrage at the receipt of a parliamentary reply that was four months late from Ntshavheni, who has brazenly evaded public accountability by dubiously submitting her travel expenses to the Joint Standing Committee on Intelligence, a secretive committee closed to both the public and the broader Parliament,' Ngobeni said.
'This is nothing more than a deliberate attempt to further shield her spending from scrutiny.'
Ngobeni added that every other minister approached with the same question had responded transparently, and Ntshavheni's conduct raised more questions than it answered.
'We ask, why?' She said.
Is it because ActionSA recently exposed more than R200 million in excessive GNU spending, including the deputy president's outrageous R950 000 bill for four nights of accommodation in Japan and the R160 000 spent by the minister of sports, arts and culture on a trip to Burkina Faso that never took place?
Lerato Ngobeni
Tensions over transparency and public trust
Ntshavheni insisted that legal provisions allowed her to submit such details to the JSCI and maintained that protecting state interests was paramount.
'You will also recall that when I'm asked questions, sometimes in Parliament, there are those that I respond partly to, and I say the details we provide to the Joint Standing Committee on Intelligence,' she said.
'We are allowed by law to provide [this information] to the JSCI.'
ActionSA, however, believes that the lack of transparency from the presidency contributes to growing public mistrust.
'The GNU has turned the public purse into a private travel slush fund,' Ngobeni charged. 'The minister in the presidency's actions reveal a flagrant disdain for accountability and a total disregard for the public's right to know how their money is spent.'
Ngobeni said the party had written to National Assembly Speaker Thoko Didiza, demanding urgent intervention and full public disclosure of Ntshavheni's travel expenditure.
She also linked the party's criticism to broader legislative efforts.
'This is exactly why ActionSA has introduced our maiden piece of legislation, Alan Beesley's 'Enhanced Cabinet Perks Cut Bill', to restore sanity to rampant executive excess. South Africans deserve leaders who serve with humility, not luxury cloaked in secrecy.'
