The Office of the Chief Justice (OCJ) spent a large amount of money on travel in the 2017/18 financial year. In recent months Judges Matter and journalist Niren Tolsi have been raising troubling questions about the management of the Office of the Chief Justice. This high travel bill reinforces their concerns.
We sent questions to Nathi Mncube, spokesperson for the Judiciary, asking him to explain these expenses.
To understand the questions, it is helpful to either read Vote 22 of the Budget, a ten-page document, or to look at the following table (page 4 in the linked PDF file, but labelled page 460 because it is part of the larger budget document):
The item that stands out in this table is the travel expenditure: R113.6 million in 2017/18. It is on this figure that most of our questions were based.
The interview below is very slightly edited and interspersed with explanatory comments.
GroundUp: According to the OCJ vote goods and
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