Public Works and Infrastructure Minister Dean Macpherson says government spends about R6 billion a year leasing private buildings while thousands of public properties remain empty, underused or in disrepair. The contradiction has turned property management into a test of competence, transparency and value for taxpayers. An asset-rich state with a rental habit The bill does not establish that government is paying rent on the exact same properties it owns. The verified problem is broader: departments continue to use private leases while a vast state estate contains buildings that are vacant, unsuitable or allowed to deteriorate. Ownership on paper is not producing usable accommodation in practice. The scale makes that failure expensive. A September 2025 parliamentary committee statement put the Property Management Trading Entity portfolio at more than 80,000 facilities and nearly 30,000 land parcels, valued at R151 billion. The same statement recorded a R28 billion historical maintenance backlog and private leases costing nearly R6 billion a year. Not every private lease is automatically wasteful. Departments may need secure, specialised or geographically suitable premises that the state cannot provide at the required time. The governance test is whether each lease begins with a reliable inventory, a condition assessment and a documented comparison between refurbishment, relocation and private rent. How weak planning becomes expensive Macpherson has described a system in which leases lapse, submissions arrive without basic information and delays create urgent procurement pressure. That pattern changes the incentives. Poor planning can make an avoidable private lease appear to be the only available answer, while the cost of an unusable state building remains elsewhere in the accounts. The five-year lease at 146 Lunnon Road in Pretoria shows how the risk compounds. Public Works says the R69.5 million agreement was concluded in March 2023 for the former Department of Public Enterprises, but the building was never occupied. A later attempt to place the National Prosecuting Authority’s Independent Directorate Against Corruption there followed what a preliminary departmental investigation described as a self-created emergency, and the lessor has since demanded more than R50 million in damages. Telkom Towers widens the concern beyond one contract. In June 2026, Macpherson said the Pretoria complex involved about R1.4 billion in expenditure and an estimated R776 million loss. He also rejected an investigative report as insufficient for clear consequence management, illustrating another weakness: identifying a failure is not the same as producing evidence strong enough for recovery, discipline or prosecution. Ten landlords and a disclosure dilemma The question of who benefits is therefore not rhetorical. In September 2024, Macpherson asked the Special Investigating Unit to motivate for presidential proclamations covering the ten highest-paid landlords in the 2021/22 and 2022/23 financial years. The request followed Auditor-General findings of suspected mismanagement and recurring overpayments in private leases. An investigation request is not a finding of guilt. Landlords may hold valid contracts, and publishing names before investigators secure records could complicate legitimate work. The distinction between scrutiny and accusation is essential when public money and reputations are both at stake. Disclosure can still be designed without prejudicing a case. Government can publish lease values, building use, procurement routes, market comparisons and beneficial ownership information on a consistent schedule, while temporarily withholding narrowly defined details when investigators provide a defensible reason. Transparency should be a system, not a dramatic release after money has already been lost. Owning buildings is not the same as managing them The strongest defence of private leasing is practical. A vacant building can be in the wrong city, require costly security upgrades or need years of rehabilitation before a department can move in. Selling non-core assets, refurbishing viable properties and leasing where necessary may produce better value than forcing every department into unsuitable state space. That defence only works if the underlying information is credible. Parliament reported in 2025 that Public Works had identified 1,764 properties for possible marketing and sale, while the department said it was accelerating the disposal or repurposing of unused land. In May 2026, Macpherson also said 801 properties the state no longer needed were proceeding towards disposal and that a new Johannesburg Deeds Office was expected to reduce rental costs. Reform will be measured less by announcements than by a shrinking gap between what the state owns and what it can actually use. Each private lease should show why public space was unavailable, each idle asset should have a funded plan, and each investigation should end i