Congratulations Taxpayer: you just bought the latest iPhone 17s for NAC council members.

The National Arts Council of South Africa (NAC) is once again embroiled in serious allegations of:

• improper expenditure,

• procurement irregularities,

• and governance failures,

that appear to violate core provisions of the Public Finance Management Act (PFMA), Treasury Regulations, and fiduciary duties owed to the public.

Today, The Public Dispatch can reveal that the NAC has bought approximately 15 Apple iPhone 17 devices for its provincial councillors. These are not employees, they are not field workers and they are not emergeny responders but these are part-time governance appointees.

The iPhone 17 is Apple's current flagship smartphone. In South Africa, it retails between R20,000 and R50,000 per unit depending on the model and storage. Depending on the model, these 15 devices have cost taxpayers between R374,382 and about R1 million.

"We are wondering on what basis does a struggling public entity justify handing out the most expensive phone to its part-time board members?" a source with direct knowledge of the matter told The Public Dispatch.

This is the same organisation that, by its own admission, operates against a backdrop of limited financial resources, receives thousands of funding applications from arts practitioners and organisations across the country, and cannot fund many deserving projects due to limited resources.

Who are these lucky councillors?

Provincial councillors are governance appointees. The NAC has representation from all nine provinces, with additional council members appointed through a ministerial process to serve on its governing body. They are not employees. They do not work at the NAC daily. They attend meetings, exercise oversight, and carry fiduciary responsibilities. They already receive sitting allowances and other benefits for that work.

In short, they are part-time board members. And the NAC has now given each of them South Africa's most expensive consumer smartphone.

"We have no problem with them getting the smart-phones but the question is, why the iPhone 17 specifically, why the most expensive option on the market? Some of them even got tablets on top of the IPhones," said another source.

Potential PFMA violation.

Several of PFMA provisions apply directly to what the NAC have allegedly done.

Section 50(2)(b) states that a member of an accounting authority, which is what every NAC councillor is may not use their position or the privileges of that position for personal gain or to improperly benefit another person.

A premium smartphone purchased with public funds and handed to a governance appointee is, on its face, a personal benefit. The burden is on the NAC to show it is not.

Section 50(3) makes matters worse. It requires every member of the accounting authority to declare any personal interest in a matter before the council and to withdraw from proceedings when that matter is considered. If councillors were present in any meeting where the procurement of their own devices was discussed or approved, and did not declare that interest and leave the room, they violated Section 50(3).

The NAC has not disclosed whether any such declaration was made. It has not even confirmed whether the full council voted on this procurement.

Section 50(1)(c) requires the accounting authority to disclose all material facts to the executive authority, in this case, the Department of Sport, Arts and Culture (DSAC), that may influence its decisions. A procurement of this value and nature is a material fact. Was DSAC told? The NAC has failed to respond on this point.

Section 38(1)(c)(ii) requires the accounting authority to prevent fruitless and wasteful expenditure. The PFMA defines fruitless and wasteful expenditure as money spent in vain that would have been avoided had reasonable care been taken.

And then there is Section 83, read with Section 86. These provisions make financial misconduct by an accounting authority a criminal offence. An accounting authority that wilfully or in a grossly negligent way fails to comply with the fiduciary duty provisions of Section 50 does not just face administrative consequences. It faces prosecution.

The NAC's councillors are the accounting authority. The procurement allegedly benefited the accounting authority. And the NAC has declined to explain this decision.