DA to lodge new Public Protector complaint against Gayton McKenzie

"The DA is just playing politics and huffing and puffing ... it is a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing."

So said Steve Motale, spin doctor for the Patriotic Alliance (PA), after the DA announced it would lodge fresh complaints against Gayton McKenzie with the Public Protector on Thursday.

It will be the third complaint the DA has brought against the PA leader and sport, arts and culture minister in eight months.

"Public money is not for strengthening political positions," the DA said in a notice to media on Tuesday.

"McKenzie is displaying Olympic-level performance at ducking parliamentary accountability, but the DA will not let taxpayer money be abused."

DA spokesperson on sport, arts and culture Leah Potgieter will file the complaint at the Public Protector's head office in Hillcrest Office Park, Pretoria, and brief reporters afterwards.

The move follows a dossier the DA handed to Public Protector Adv Kholeka Gcaleka on July 23, asking her to investigate whether McKenzie breached the Executive Ethics Code.

The first was the R109.9m Mzansi Golden Economy grant programme, which funds artists, festivals and cultural organisations.

The DA alleged three of the six people McKenzie appointed to the panel deciding how that money was split were active PA members at the time.

Potgieter said the programme had not been set up "to create opportunities for the PA".

The second leg was the R30.9m the department spent on its delegation to the 2026 Fifa World Cup in North America.

Departmental figures cited by the DA put R7.9m of that on travel, R6.7m on a legends exhibition match, more than R3m on match tickets and R10m on programme activities.

McKenzie has said his own travel came to just over R1m for the five weeks and that he turned down subsistence allowances worth R55,000.

He appeared before Parliament's portfolio committee on sport, arts and culture on August 4 to account for the World Cup spending.