SONA – A Colossal waste of money
Terence Pillay resolved to avoid the State of the Nation Address 2014 (SONA) at all costs, but the social media stream proved far too powerful for his self-imposed exile.
I think more than anything, the thing that got my goat about this year’s event, like every year, was the flagrant waste of money for what essentially is just another day at work for these South African parliamentarians.
Apart from a Nollywood-style Red Carpet arrival, which I can’t understand given that these are public servants, not celebrities, there was also a multi-million rand Gala Dinner – a very, very expensive SONA after party, paid for, you guessed it, by the poor working class of SA.
The government had the gall to bask in the fact that they didn’t use the whole +/- R9-million budget allocated to this shindig and came in at something like =/- R5-million.
So if 1000 people attended this brazenly lavish do, we the taxpayer forked out R5000 a head for the SONA piss up.
Meanwhile, children in schools across the country are sitting under trees for a classroom or in makeshift mud huts, with no access to books are technology.
The country is also literally burning with protests and strikes for the lack of service delivery in areas around South Africa.
People are forced to get clean water in buckets just to survive… How about routing some of this spending this way?
We really need a reality check and greater perspective when a government party trumps addressing abject poverty…
Do you agree with Terence? Share your views with him on twitter @terencepillay1
-Terence Pillay