Dear Editor
The DA notes President Ramaphosa’s proclamation authorising the Special Investigating Unit (SIU) to probe serious allegations of maladministration, unlawful expenditure and possible corruption at South African Tourism (SAT). This is a long-overdue step, and one the DA has been calling for as SAT has lurched from crisis to crisis under Minister Patricia de Lille’s mismanagement.
For years, the DA has warned that SAT’s procurement environment was riddled with irregularities and persistent failures in financial controls. The period now placed under investigation, beginning in March 2020, is particularly significant. The invoices targeted by the SIU originate from exactly that time, when the now-suspended CEO, Nombulelo Guliwe, was serving as SAT’s Chief Financial Officer.
It was during her tenure as CFO and later as CEO that SAT recorded repeated qualified audits, incurred unauthorised expenditure, and became mired in scandals that shattered industry confidence.
The proclamation’s focus on whether these contracts were fair, competitive, transparent, or cost-effective goes directly to concerns the DA previously raised in Parliament, including in our September 2025 statement exposing how SAT’s failures had driven the private sector to withhold up to R500 million in TOMSA funds.
At the time, Minister De Lille insisted there was “absolutely no crisis”. Today’s SIU referral confirms what we have argued all along: there was a crisis, and it was deep.
Minister De Lille’s decision to dissolve the SAT Board, while shielding the very executive implicated in wasteful expenditure, accelerated the collapse in governance. She ignored warnings, disrupted Auditor-General processes, and refused to release key reports. All while SAT haemorrhaged public money and public trust.
The DA therefore welcomes this investigation as a necessary step towards recovering losses and exposing the full extent of the dysfunction that has plagued SAT. South Africans deserve to know how much was lost, who benefitted, and why political protection was placed above accountability.
Regards
Haseena Ismail MP
DA Spokesperson on Tourism