'They're parasites': EFF slams Ntshavheni & Ndabeni-Abrahams for racking up R3.6m in hotel bills

The EFF has described the splurging of R3.6m on hotels by two ministers of communications and digital technologies, Khumbudzo Ntshavheni and her predecessor Stella Ndabeni-Abrahams, as “appalling and disgusting”.

It was revealed this week that Ntshavheni and Ndabeni-Abrahams had spent R15,345,562.86 since May 2019.

In a statement, the EFF said the revelations come "as no surprise as both ministers have been implicated in corruption scandals and misuse of state resources in the past".

“While the rest of the country and the world was suffering from travel-related restrictions as a result of Covid-19 over the past three years, the ministers were living a lavish lifestyle at the expense of taxpayers,” said the EFF.

“The inhumanity of spending such exorbitant amounts of money on accommodation while government meetings and interactions have been held virtually for the past three years, is indicative of parasites who have no regard for the massive poverty of ordinary people.

“Stella Ndabeni-Abrahams and Khumbudzo Ntshaveni are parasites, who use the state as a means of personal enrichment.” 

“If Ramaphosa has any semblance of decency and commitment to rooting out corruption, he will remove these self-obsessed and good-for-nothing individuals, who misused state money in the face of retrenchments, closure of businesses, and death,” said the EFF.

The amounts were revealed in a parliamentary written reply from the department’s acting director-general Nonkqubela Jordan-Dyani.

Of the R15m, R3,615,001.95 was spent on the ministers’ accommodation, while R1,021,003.90 was paid to house deputy ministers and more than R10m on officials in the department.

The total amount spent by the department on catering for the period in question was R739,000.