Department of International Relations and Cooperation (Dirco) Minister Ronald Lamola has highlighted challenges faced by Dirco with a budget for the 2024/25 financial year reduced from R6.9 billion in 2023/24 to R6.57 billion.
Addressing the financial constraints, Lamola said the department was facing critical staff shortages exacerbated by managing exchange rate volatility, which impacted 60% of expenditures allocated to missions abroad.
"Strategic cost management in this area is essential to safeguarding our financial stability," Lamola said.
The minister lamented that due to budget constraints, Dirco could only fill critical vacancies at its head office, resulting in a "very high vacancy rate negatively impacting the department's operations and service delivery”.
“The Department can still not fill all the critical vacancies with the available funds, and operations continue to be negatively affected. The June 2024 outbound transfer cycle (Mission Posts) placement process was also deferred due to the shortfall in the Compensation-of-Employees budget,” Lamola said.
However, he said positions at the Assistant Director, Deputy Director, and Director levels were filled through internal promotions, to address “the lack of upward mobility within the department”.
He said the department would enhance its IT and property infrastructure portfolio to “optimise resources”, to release lease funds and redirect them towards operational needs.
Good party secretary-general, Brett Herron, said Lamola and the GNU must consider what role Dirco should be playing in the development of the country.
“If our top priority is to eliminate poverty, inequality and to create employment then the minister must assess what role Dirco plays in that.
“We need foreign missions to facilitate and champion South Africa as an attractive investment destination to increase foreign direct investment.
While we must maintain our voice for human rights and justice internationally we can do so without an embassy or mission in every country.
“Instead of complaining about budget cuts we would propose that the minister rethinks international relations and, in particular, that we have missions in the right places and where our foreign missions can serve more than one country. Dirco has done some exceptional work representing South African and global issues around the world. If our finances require a cutting back on representation then the starting point must be where representation has historically not served the national development project well or at all,” he said.
Director at Surgetower Associates, a management consultancy, Siseko Maposa said the budget cut will necessitate a “more austere and focused approach for South Africa's missions abroad, potentially impacting their global influence”.
“However, this also presents an opportunity to embrace fiscal prudence and rationalise the country's extensive and bloated global missions - a luxury peer nations of similar economic size have foregone. The state must consolidate, close, or strategically align missions,” he said.
Cape Times