I'm reminded of the fact that people are very happy to spend other people's money but tend to be rather more circumspect about how they spend their own.

Helen Zille is incensed that Western Cape Premier Ebrahim Rasool is setting up a commission to investigate the Cape Town "spy" saga. She makes some rather telling points:
Zille said she had written a letter to Western Cape Premier Ebrahim Rasool asking him to suspend the commission on the grounds that it was a "gross abuse of power" and would waste taxpayers' money, promoting the African National Congress's (ANC) "political purposes".

She said the Erasmus commission would rack up more than R5-million in legal costs alone, of which the city could expect to pay about R2-million.

She said the police had been investigating the matter for the past few months and found nothing.

"The only reasonable assumption to be drawn is that the police have found no evidence of any wrongdoing by any person."

The commission would further result in a waste of resources as virtually the entire upper echelon of the city manager's office, the speaker, the mayor and various other councillors had been subpoenaed.

The Erasmus commission was established -- "ostensibly" according to Zille -- to look into the city's appointment of George Fivaz and Associates to investigate councillor Badih Chaaban.

In her 14-page letter Zille wrote that while Rasool was prepared to pay more than R5-million investigating the use of R3 500, no inquiries were ever made into the Big Bay land tender.

Dyanti also never inquired into former city manager Wallace Mgoqi's appointment of the Full Swing Trading company in the run-up to the previous local government elections.

Dyantyi had further failed to confirm Chaaban's dismissal from the city council.
full story from M&G here
Spend R5 million investigating the spending of R3500.00?

Now if that expense was coming out of of his own pocket, I reckon Mr Rasool would be reassessing his priorities.