Sisulu: I didn’t fly that high
The wings of Public Service and Administration Minister Lindiwe Sisulu may have been clipped following her demotion earlier this year from the defence department, but she still claims she’s not as high-flying as it seems.
According to the Mail & Guardian, Sisulu issued a terse statement yesterday asking her successor, Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula, to correct parliamentary replies that claim Sisulu undertook 203 flights on hired Gulfstream jets.
Her complaint? Her trips were not all on chartered luxury jets – there were only 35 of those.
The rest were on VIP planes owned by the South African Air Force.
Answering a parliamentary question, Sisulu admitted in May 2012, when she was the defence boss, to taking 268 trips, but said they were divided between trips taken on planes owned by the air force and jets owned by private firms.
So why the fuss now?
Is it related to the ANC’s Mangaung conference and alleged attempts to tarnish her image?
“Not at all,” her spokesperson Ndivhuwo Mabaya said, “the relationship between the two ministers is one of the best. Wherever they are, they are just laughing every day. It’s just the calculations that are not correct.”
Mapisa-Nqakula is adamant nothing was miscalculated. “We got our figures from the same Air Force that served under
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