Decades in the making, SA’s embassies are in ruin

In early July I received notice that South Africa House, the seat of the South African High Commission to the UK in London’s Trafalgar Square, had shut its doors unexpectedly. 

There was no public notice from the Department of International Relations and Cooperation (Dirco), no explanation as to why the building had closed, no announcement on the High Commission’s website, and no details on the sign nailed to the High Commission’s front door. “Kindly note that South Africa House is currently closed for business until further notice”. The message, typed out in miniscule font, is all that anyone outside the High Commission could see. If you had any business at South Africa House, you would have been sorely disappointed upon arrival. 

Up until then, I had received a raft of information from South Africans in London, including tipoffs from anonymous whistleblowers, as to the state of the building and its functionality, which seemed to be groaning under the weight of years of mismanagement and a lack of maintenance. I was told that at times the building would not have water, that it was unusable in the winter months due to a non-functioning heating system, and that staff often worked from home as office facilities were scant.

Of course, as a legislator it’s often difficult to corroborate each and every claim that comes your way, especially in my case when the assets over which I am required to conduct oversight lie thousands of kilometres away. And it certainly helps to get your facts straight before pursuing a matter in the public interest. 

But South Africa House’s sudden closure was suspicious, especially given that SA’s embassy at the Chancery in The Hague has now been shut for close to a year under identical circumstances – a building in a sorry state I managed to see for myself in November. 

Whistleblower

I immediately blew the whistle. Why are some of our most prized international properties, housing some of our most important embassies and foreign missions, suddenly, and without explanation, closing shop? 

Have years of mismanagement, lack of maintenance and upkeep caught up with the department tasked with overseeing the South African government’s outward face abroad? Dirco was quick to release a press statement clarifying the matter. The closure, we are told, is due to planned renovation and refurbishment delayed by complicated local heritage approvals and negotiations with the Crown Estate. 

That’s all fine and well, but why has work been left for so long that it now requires the closure of the building entirely? And why was Dirco not immediately forthcoming with information surrounding the renovation allegedly underway? 

A News24 write-up took Dirco’s line and referred to the DA’s claims as “dramatic”. But the reality is that the department’s communique leaves many questions unanswered and does not paint the full picture of SA’s foreign asset management for the public. The truth of the matter is that this conundrum is now 27 years in the making.

The function to manage and procure properties and accommodation abroad had been allocated to Dirco from the Department of Public Works and Infrastructure by the then Minister of Public Service and Administration on 1 May 1999, on the recommendation of the Public Service Commission in terms of section 3(3)(a) of the Public Service Act, 1994. The scope of this mandate includes functions relating to the leasing, purchasing, alterations, maintenance, refurbishment and furnishing of SA’s foreign immovable assets. This means that Dirco alone is responsible for the upkeep of our embassy buildings and residences, but the mandate’s transfer is not as simple as alluded to. 

A response to a parliamentary question I asked Minister Ronald Lamola in November last year confirmed that while the mandate itself was transferred to Dirco, the commensurate budget and departmental programmes were not moved over along with it. So while Dirco is responsible for the maintenance and upkeep of SA’s foreign assets, it was given neither the money nor the technical expertise to do so. This, of course, created a ticking timebomb in so far as building maintenance is concerned. 

Anyone who owns a property will know that small problems, if left for long enough, become much larger and expensive ones that cannot be ignored.  

‘Collaboration’

Fast forward to 18 August 2021, when Parliament received a joint briefing by Dirco and the Department of Public Works and Infrastructure on “the collaboration between the two departments in preparation for Dirco’s assumption of custodianship of state-owned properties abroad”.

The interesting observation made when going through this meeting summary on the Parliamentary Monitoring Group’s website, is that Dirco speaks as if the mandate’s transfer is recent. Dirco wasn’t providing an overview of its work to date, it was “preparing” in 2021, to assume a mandate transferred 22 years earlier in 1999. 

The meeting further outlines that while an inter-departmental task team had been created to equip Dirco to enact its foreign asset management mandate, Dirco could not keep up with its responsibilities. Then acting Chief Financial Officer for Dirco, Hlengiwe Bhengu, made a telling remark: “…the Department continued to face a backlog in maintenance and renovation activities. This was caused by maintenance being reactive in nature, with a high reliance on unscheduled or urgent activities, and the lack of a fully-fledged and professionally staffed property management portfolio unit at Head Office, as well as in the missions abroad.” 

In the very same reply to my parliamentary question posed in November 2025 mentioned above, there is an important proviso: while the Department of Public Works and Infrastructure is tasked with providing technical skills to assist Dirco, this was no longer taking place due to staff shortages within the department. As for the funds, Minister Lamola only confirmed in his budget speech this year that he was writing to National Treasury to source money for foreign property maintenance. 

Smoking gun

But the smoking gun came in October 2025 when I made public damning findings from the Auditor General’s Budgetary Review and Recommendations Report for the 2024-25 financial year. 

The report outlined how Dirco’s asset management process and register, particularly the management of state-owned properties abroad for diplomatic use, had led to the department’s financial performance to regress, moving from an audit outcome of ‘unqualified with findings’ to ‘qualified with findings’. To quote the report: “An additional concern identified through the mission audits relates to the poor state and condition of some of the state-owned immoveable properties where Dirco is responsible for the upkeep of these properties. The lack of maintenance of these properties over time has rendered some as uninhabitable and transferred officials are then required to be accommodated in rental properties.”

From the information available, we can thus determine that Dirco has been responsible for the management and upkeep of our international properties and foreign assets since 1999, but has not sourced the technical expertise to undertake the necessary work until roughly 2019, and has only realised that it needs more money to do so in 2026. With this information, one can understand why the closure of South Africa House warrants outrage and scrutiny. 

Spending priorities?

The Democratic Alliance, as part of the Government of National Unity, is working tirelessly to attract foreign direct investment, grow our economy, and create jobs. That is impossible when our country’s embassies – its primary economic billboards – remain in a shambles after decades in the making under the ANC. The cherry on top of this fiasco is how Minister Lamola is spending the department’s current budget. 

SA is spending tens of millions of rands on international litigation, and granting expensive multimillion rand loans to the ANC’s friends in Cuba while our embassies are falling apart. To say that Dirco has its spending priorities wrong would be a gross understatement. 

As for the journalists who label the DA’s concerns around this as “dramatic”, I’ll refer to the age-old saying: If someone says it’s raining, and another person says it’s dry, it’s not your job to quote them both. Your job is to look out the window and find out which is true. 

If you happen to be inside a South African embassy and there’s water falling on your head, it’s more than likely due to a leaking roof. DM

Ryan Smith MP is the Democratic Alliance Spokesperson on International Relations and Cooperation.