This week’s Talkback question on the Mail & Guardian Online:
Is there any justification for ministers driving top-of-the-range cars?
Read more
This week’s Talkback question on the Mail & Guardian Online:
Is there any justification for ministers driving top-of-the-range cars?
Read more
no, unless they earn the money legally, before they are elected to parliament and buy them themselves, then the usual fule claims etc can be made
How else will our luxury car makers achieve sales target if our ministers did not give them support?
Not only do they drive these cars, have you seen what the rest of the convoy are driving?
Surely you do not expect these people to reduce their standard of transport and build a house or 10 for the poor and needy.
The class of air travel should be looked at also.
they get between 1 and 2 million rand a year *and* get housing. they can have top of the line cars, but they can buy their own dang cars. i think that’s the real issue here.
No. I recently heard someone justify this by saying that the cars symbolize that the person has “made it”. I am sure that this is an accurate reflection of the attitude, but it is a blatant violation of the public trust. They are public servants, first and foremost, and it is not in the public’s interest to pay for expensive cars, given the state of the economy and tax revenue. Any government official who doesn’t understand that they are servants is a discredit to the country and its people.
Not while there are thousands of kids going hungry!!
The sheer audacity of these civil “servants” to demand such is an insult to the people that voted them into power.
Unfortunately those unfortunate people don’t appear to have the savvy to see through the sharade and vote somebody else in power, that does actually have their welfare as a priority.
No
There’s a difference between top of the range (security, safety, communication) and top of the range (sunroof, custom paint, mags, entertainment system). The former is certainly allowable if motivated; the latter is just being a greedy show-off. If you want to show off your wealth and status, you buy it yourself out of your own money. I don’t understand the point of showing off with taxpayer’s money, as if proving that you couldn’t do it by yourself, how satisfying can it be?
Interesting that Tokyo, having independent means, has elected to keep his own decent-enough cars. Perhaps he saw it coming or perhaps he’s smart enough to realise that in order to be a successful politician in the long term one has to either (a) care about one’s consituency or (b) be really good at pretending.
“Is there any justification for ministers driving top-of-the-range cars?”
The one justification that might be applicable is to demonstrate social status (Think pissing competition).
Please tell me fellow comrades, cant thse people pimp modest cars(security and all), that no longer cost an arm and a leg but the whole body?
Funny, I thought Toyota’s were the most reliable cars. If reliability was a major factor in deciding which cars ministers should get rather than prestige, then they would all be driving tazzs
man, this a very thorny matter. but what the heck the damage of aprtheid has left a mental reaction amongst many of “our people” that when you get R1m, you catch the fastest taxi to any German luxury carmaker dealership. Pity the elected representatives (ministers) in particular, are supposed to be imbued with a sense of decorum that pledges modesty, that an ostentetious set of wheels have little bearing on who you are etc; and therefore understanding that even if you run to the nearest German luxury carmaker dealership, you need not max your car allowance!
Funniest of all is when they blame apartheid for doing it or compare it to apartheid. Wakey, wakey; it’s the trend in most of Africa.
Rotten politicians and good people who get screwed. SA is no different.
Nothing represents the capitalistic system better than over priced and enviromentally damaging motor vehicles. The question is not that a modern day South African MP is adhering to apartheid era policies as set out and therefore is not breaking any law, the question is when a country has a situation where the poor are getting poorer and the rich getting richer surely if you believe in changing this so that everyone gets a better share of the cake, you should base your selection on firstly selecting a vehicle that is produced in South Africa, thats right Blade supporting your so called Union members efforts to keep thier jobs by ensuring demand for their production and secondly making sure that vehicles themselves do not use more than 6 liters per 100 kilometers. That is called leadership and quite frankly we are a poor country when it comes to that resource.
I found this site very interesting – http://www.equalitytrust.org.uk It clearly shows that countries where the divide between the rich and the poor are smallest, both rich and poor people have a better life. The ANC says it wants to create a better life for all- so really it needs to concentrate on creating a equitable society. How this is achieved is debatable but I certainly think it would be helpful to move away from leadership being so conspicuously materialistic. In Scandinavia both politicians & royalty use public transport – and interestingly these countries have more equitable societies