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Cape Town - State transport entities spent R19m on World Cup tickets, Transport Minister Sibusisu Ndebele said on Wednesday.
This brings the total spent on match seats by the government and parastatals to nearly R130m.
Ndebele said the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (Prasa) paid R10.8m for 4 570 tickets.
It had originally hoped to acquire more than 50 000 tickets to sell as part of rail-travel packages, but Fifa could not confirm a booking of that size.
According to Ndebele, the Airports Company of South Africa spent R4.67m on 170 tickets for six World Cup soccer matches, including the opening match and Sunday's final.
The South African Maritime Safety Authority (Samsa) set aside R2.2m for tickets for stakeholders and high-performing staff members, and the Air Traffic and Navigation Services spent R1.4m on tickets to invite stakeholders like Namibia's permanent transport secretary to matches.
Ndebele also revealed that struggling entities purchased tickets for last year's Fifa Confederations Cup.
The Road Accident Fund, which said its backlog of R40bn in claims would have to be financed by a cash injection from government, paid R1.8m for 600 tickets for the 2009 tournament.
Waste money
The government warned departments before the tournament not to waste money on tickets. Revelations of their purchases have sparked an outcry.
"It is particularly an issue of concern that Prasa would see fit to spend such an en exorbitant amount on entertainment purposes when, by its own admission, it recently revealed that it needs R100bn in the next 10 to 12 years to prevent South Africa’s passenger rail services from collapsing," the Democratic Alliance said on Wednesday.
Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan warned that the purchases amounted to irregular expenditure in terms of the Public Finance Management Act and that accounting officers could be held personally liable and charged with financial misconduct.
Most of the money, some R80m, was spent by semi-state entities, some of which have in recent years needed massive bailouts from the state to survive.
Eskom, which has been embroiled in a wage dispute that nearly resulted in a strike in the last week of the tournament, spent R12m on World Cup tickets.
South African Airways spent R23m on match seats, just two months before getting a R1.6bn bail-out from the government.
The SABC splurged R3.3m on tickets. PetroSA and Transnet jointly spent R24m and the Free State provincial government and the Mangaung municipality spent almost R22m on tickets.
Selfish
National departments that bought tickets included trade and industry, which spent R4.7m.
Congress of SA Trade Unions general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi has criticised the purchases as a "most selfish way of spending money" while workers were asked to temper their wage demands in the national interest.
The chairman of Parliament's standing committee on public accounts, Themba Godi, has vowed to hold to account departments that flaunted the finance management act.
However, Planning Minister Trevor Manuel has pleaded for understanding for parastatals that bought tickets, saying some were business entities that needed to make profits by socialising with clients.
"We mustn’t hyperventilate when the national airline takes tour operators and builds a relationship with them, because that is building the business.
"When you take a local authority or a government department and they spend taxpayers’ money on themselves it’s a different issue."
