EFF leader Julius Malema has challenged the South African Police Service’s (SAPS) assertion that the party’s March 2023 national shutdown cost the police R368 million, calling the figure implausibly high for a single-day operation.
The cost was disclosed by SAPS chief financial officer Lieutenant-General Puleng Dimpane during her testimony before parliament’s ad hoc committee this week.
Breakdown of expenditure
Dimpane presented a breakdown of expenditure for several major police operations, revealing that the deployment for the 20 March 2023 shutdown drew hundreds of millions from the SAPS budget.
She also noted that the police response to the July 2021 unrest cost R945 million.
The EFF-led protest in March 2023 called for President Cyril Ramaphosa’s resignation and an end to load shedding.
‘One day, R368 million?’ – Julius Malema pushes back
During a question-and-answer session, Malema pressed Dimpane on the accuracy of the costs attributed to the shutdown.
“If you were talking about the EFF national shutdown, it was one day. It was in March 2023, one day, and it cost you R368m?” Malema asked.
Dimpane responded that she could not immediately recall all the details of the operation.
“My memory is leaving me. I can’t recall the exact issue, but there was a national shutdown during that period, and we needed to deploy [officers] and ensure we protect and that there’s stability in those provinces which were affected,” she said.
Deployment decisions, not politics, determine costs – SAPS
Dimpane told MPs that operational budgets are driven by the scale of deployment required at the time.
“These are operational decisions that are made to ensure that we are effective in terms of police public order issues and ensure there’s stability in the country.”
She added that the cost reflects “the number of members deployed to support the affected provinces,” suggesting that the shutdown’s potential national impact necessitated extensive mobilisation.
The committee is expected to continue probing SAPS expenditure as part of broader scrutiny into major public-order operations.
