Cape Town — The Democratic Alliance (DA) has charged that millions of rands of South African taxpayers' money is being used to prop up rogue African states through a continental fund intended to promote democracy.

DA international relations spokesman Kenneth Mubu was speaking in Parliament yesterday on the content of a report from the office of the New Partnership for Africa's Development (Nepad) that showed R600m had been paid from the African Renaissance Fund (ARF) to Zimbabwe and R172m to Guinea Conakry - countries with questionable records on human rights and democracy. The fund is designed to promote democracy in Africa.

Mr Mubu said he was "dismayed" by the report to Parliament by Harvey Short, the director of Nepad at the Department of International Relations, "which shows that more than R770m of our state funds have been used to prop up rogue states".

Mr Mubu said the report showed that R600m in "economic assistance" had been provided to Zimbabwe's government under the ARF, even though Parliament's international relations committee had heard that SA did not track how the funding was spent.

"A total of R300m was transferred in 2009 as part of an 'economic recovery programme', a portion of it in the form of emergency food aid. However, during the portfolio committee meeting, when I asked whether the department had monitored and evaluated how the funds had been used, the response was that they had not."

Mr Mubu noted that in 2008, the same year that a military coup saw a military junta take power in Guinea Conakry, that country received R172m from the fund.

"Disturbingly, the ARF continued to fund two more projects in Guinea in 2009, while it was under the rule of Capt (Moussa) Camara, only suspending a third due to political instability. In that same year the junta declared demonstrations illegal a day before a planned public demonstration in its capital city of Conakry. However, according to media reports at the time, thousands of demonstrators defied this ban and assembled in a soccer stadium.

"The junta ordered its soldiers to respond and 157 people were left dead in the ensuing violence. Again, officials indicated they have no way of knowing where this money was spent, and how much of it, if any, actually went towards the causes earmarked," Mr Mubu said.

Mr Short, in his presentation to Parliament's international relations committee earlier this week on the Nepad report, said the ARF's guiding principles were alluded to by former foreign affairs deputy minister Aziz Pahad when he introduced the ARF b ill in the National Assembly on October 6 2000.

These guiding principles included promoting democracy and good governance; human resource development; socioeconomic development and integration; facilitating dialogue on developmental issues such as rural development and gender; and humanitarian assistance and disaster relief in Africa.

Mr Mubu responded that "clearly these laudable objectives have been usurped by the Department of International Relations' utter inability to oversee the implementation of the ARF, and the accountable distribution of funds.

"The minister of international relations needs to get funding allocations at the ARF under control. I will request an urgent meeting with Ms (Maite) Nkoana -Mashabane to discuss this matter, and look at ways of instituting oversight mechanisms to ensure that funding is allocated appropriately," Mr Mubu said.