{"id":143304,"date":"2016-11-15T15:29:54","date_gmt":"2016-11-15T13:29:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=143304"},"modified":"2016-11-15T15:29:54","modified_gmt":"2016-11-15T13:29:54","slug":"sa-defence-force-chief-splashes-out-r500000-on-flights-to-cuba-with-his-wife","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/government\/143304\/sa-defence-force-chief-splashes-out-r500000-on-flights-to-cuba-with-his-wife\/","title":{"rendered":"SA Defence Force chief splashes out R500,000 on flights to Cuba with his wife"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Democratic Alliance says that the chief of the South African National Defence Force (SANDF), General Solly Shoke, spent almost R500,000 on plane tickets to Cuba.<\/p>\n<p>A reply to a DA parliamentary question revealed that Shoke, his wife and three other, yet to be identified, officials spent six days on the Caribbean island in June this year.<\/p>\n<p>The political party said that it had been <a href=\"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/government\/128209\/defence-force-chief-blows-r500000-on-a-trip-to-cuba-with-his-wife\/\" target=\"_blank\">under the impression<\/a> that the entire trip had cost R500,000, however the parliamentary reply revealed that half a million rand was spent on flights alone &#8211; R88,000 each.<\/p>\n<p>The reply:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;A total amount of R442 643.52 was spent on flight tickets on the trip to Cuba by the CSANDF and his delegation from 13-19 June 2016.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Accommodation, car rental and all other expenses were catered for by the host.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The DA said it will now be submitting further parliamentary questions to get specific information on:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>What airline the individuals fly with;<\/li>\n<li>What class did they fly;<\/li>\n<li>Their full itinerary for the duration of the trip; and<\/li>\n<li>Whether the flights paid for by the Department of Defence were in line with cost containment measures put in place by the National Treasury?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&#8220;This expenditure is completely unacceptable, given that key defence areas are being neglected, essential equipment is falling apart, and we are struggling to manage peace-keeping commitments,&#8221; the DA said in a statement.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;National Treasury has also directed Departments to implement cost containment measures given the dire state of our economy. Clearly the Minister of Defence, Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula, is ignoring National Treasury and equally, is failing to ensure that hard-earned public money is spent effectively,&#8221; it said.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Read: <a href=\"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/government\/141693\/oyster-box-minister-splashes-out-r500000-on-trip-to-chicago\/\" target=\"_blank\">\u201cOyster Box\u201d minister splashes out R500,000 on trip to Chicago<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Democratic Alliance says that the chief of the South African National Defence Force (SANDF), General Solly Shoke, spent almost R500,000 on plane tickets to Cuba.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":128217,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[26,6245],"class_list":["post-143304","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-government","tag-headline","tag-sandf"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143304","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=143304"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143304\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":143334,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143304\/revisions\/143334"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/128217"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=143304"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=143304"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=143304"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}