How to waste tax-payers money 101.

I’m currently visiting South-Africa for the first time as a tourist from [REDACTED]. I’ve been completely in awe of the fauna and flora and just generally how beautiful this country is and everything it has to offer. People are friendly and always happy to help you to the best of their capabilities. However, let’s not beat about the bush; the amount of poverty, crime and people without a decent job or shelter is very worrisome when travelling the countryside. As well as the road infrastructure is becoming very dangerous with potholes the size of a crater here and there. I’ve read about how it is run by a ******* organisation, a government that *****s money from its people, but I didn’t think I would actually get to have first-hand experience of it. Here’s what happened…

I’ve been roadtripping for the past 11 days around SA, with one of my last stops staying at the [REDACTED] in [REDACTED]. This was on [REDACTED] of April 2022. The first night we spent almost entirely alone at the lodge, but when we came back from a game drive on the second day, the entire parking lot and street was taken over by new, luxury vehicles of German origin. We head to the reception and ask what was going on and apparently the “Ministery of Environment” was staying with us tonight. Ministery of Environment (MoE) sounded quite strange as there were multiple new BMW X5 M50d SUV’s outside, a car with an engine that BMW actually pulled out of production because of how un-environmentally friendly it is. It’s also a €130.000 car where I’m from, which translates to about roughly R 2.180.000. While it seemed a bit excessive for a South-African government official, it wasn’t that out of the ordinary I guess because our politicians also drive luxurious foreign cars paid with tax-payer’s money. I’m guessing it has something to do with their fragile ego and need to flex upon the ‘peasants’ of society. Anyway, I digress…

At dinner, the entire restaurant was taken over by the delegation and entourage of the MoE (about 40+ people), surprisingly, there was one white lady sitting at the head of the table. I had to google her, but turns out it was a woman called Barbera Creecy; Minister of Forestry, Fishery and Environment. After she threw the bones of her meat, together with her napkin, on the floor under the table (is this common? Seems a bit ill mannered…) the delegation went on to have a ‘meeting’ to undoubtedly discuss some urgent matters to make this country a better place. Ofcourse this meeting was complimented with liquor and cigars on the patio. We decided to go back to our room at this point.

Unfortunatly, the room right next to ours, was the room where the entourage of the MoE was holding their after-party at this point. Loud music, beer bottles clattering and laughter were keeping us up all night. As we had a plane to catch early in the morning, I went to tell reception if they could ask them to turn down the loud noises (there was a security guard at the door to ‘protect’ this undoubtedly important posse so I couldn’t ask myself). Their first reaction to the request was that we were making all the noise. The kind of argument a 5 year old would make when getting called something; “no, you are!”. As you can imagine, the noise continued at an even higher decibel rate than before. As I continued to lay awake in bed, I failed to realise why the MoE has a delegation of so many people and on top of that an entourage whose sole purpose is to party, make noise and make other guests feel un-safe. I felt very dissapointed for SA if this is the way how people are running it. This entourage was by far some of the most self-centric, egotistical, money-wasting individuals I’ve ever witnessed and I still fail to understand their value to the MoE and why they are travelling with these freeloaders… Also dissapointed in this Barbera Creecy, I was expecting someone of her education, status and position to run a better regime in the MoE.

I guess there’s not really a point to my story, I just wanted to share my experience as an outsider…

I’ve redacted some information, just in case this reaches someone with *******ed power and they’re butthurt about this. I’d like to be able to travel here again in the near future.