Note to Editors: Attached please find a soundbite in English here by Michael Waters MPL.
The Democratic Alliance (DA) demands that Gauteng Premier Panyaza Lesufi and MEC for e-Government, Bonginkosi Dhlamini, urgently account for serious discrepancies in its e-Panic Button programme. Lesufi’s administration claimed to have distributed more than 80,000 physical panic buttons when official records subsequently reflected only 2,000.
Premier Lesufi has left Gauteng residents, who were promised hundreds of thousands of devices to enhance their safety, in a difficult situation. Budget constraints have halted the physical roll-out of the panic buttons.
An investigation published by GroundUp this week has exposed an extraordinary contradiction between the Premier’s Office’s December 2024 announcement and the figures presented by Lesufi in February 2025.
In a written reply to the DA’s questions tabled in the Gauteng Provincial Legislature (GPL), the MEC Dhlamini confirmed that the department had already spent R118,832,719.51 on the e-Panic Button programme.
Most concerning is the MEC’s confirmation that each physical panic button costs R908.50, inclusive of VAT, branding, installation, configuration, and packaging. Based on this unit cost, the department’s reported expenditure of R2,362,100 equates to 2,600 physical panic buttons. Yet the department’s own annual report records only 2,000 physical buttons deployed during the 2024/25 financial year.
The department must account for the difference and provide documentary proof of how many devices were ordered, delivered, paid for, and distributed. The department failed to provide a breakdown of payments made to private security companies, ambulance services, and other emergency responders. Instead, the MEC said Evolve, the appointed service provider, manages these arrangements, and the department is not operationally involved in the provider’s back-office operations.
The people of Gauteng deserve to know whether this programme has delivered value for money and whether public funds have been properly accounted for. The Premier and the MEC cannot remain silent while figures from their own administration contradict one another.
The DA will continue pursuing accountability until the full facts surrounding the procurement, expenditure and delivery of this programme are placed before the e-Government portfolio committee in the GPL.