Sona 2025’s policing bill alone was R1.26m, says Firoz Cachalia

The policing bill for the 2025 state of the nation address (Sona) amounted to just more than R1.25m, a disclosure made by interim police minister Firoz Cachalia in a written reply to a parliamentary question from Rise Mzansi MP Makashule Gana. The amount is in addition to the R6m allocated by parliament to host the address in 2025. Cachalia confirmed the South African Police Service (Saps) spent R1,258,592.03 on security deployment for the Sona delivered on February 6 2025.

The figure relates exclusively to SAPS operational deployment for Sona and excludes all other event-related expenditure. According to the reply, officers were drawn from the protection and security services (PSS) national office, as well as specialised units including canine and bomb-disposal teams in the Western Cape and PSS formations in the Eastern Cape, Free State and Northern Cape. The minister declined to disclose the exact number of officers deployed, citing operational security considerations.

The disclosure is significant not because of its absolute size, but because it provides one of the few verified, itemised costs associated with Sona 2025. Public debate around the expense of the annual address has frequently conflated policing costs with parliamentary hosting expenditure and presidential protocol spending. The parliamentary reply draws a clear institutional boundary, confirming the R1.26m figure covers only SAPS security deployment.

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Parliament’s costs are accounted for separately through its own budget vote. Ahead of the 2025 address, parliament publicly confirmed that it had allocated R6m to host Sona, covering venue preparation at Cape Town City Hall, temporary infrastructure, ceremonial arrangements and the subsequent two-day debate and presidential reply held in the dome. These expenditures fall within parliament’s constitutional responsibility to facilitate sittings of the National Assembly.

For the current year, 2026, parliament has indicated it intends to keep the cost of hosting Sona broadly in line with previous City Hall-based addresses. Speaker Thoko Didiza said parliament had earmarked “more or less the same” amount as the previous year, placing the hosting budget at about R6m-R7m, with some costs offset by sponsorships received by parliament. Presiding officers have indicated that this may be the final Sona delivered away from the parliamentary precinct.

Didiza said delays in the start of construction on the new parliamentary precinct had now been overcome, following earlier complications linked to the demolition of heritage structures. She noted that the process required continuous oversight by heritage specialists in the built environment, which had slowed progress but was now under way. In the interim, MPs will again debate the president’s address in adomeerected across the road from parliament.

The structure, formally handed over by the department of public works, has been reinforced to withstand Cape Town’s weather conditions. The reinforcement work, undertaken after MPs raised concern during its brief use last year, cost about R30m and focused on improving safety, acoustics and temperature control.

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