The auditor-general (AG) of SA cannot do everything alone but needs the collaboration of those in the municipal value chain to improve audit outcomes.
While the number of clean audits for the 2020/2021 financial year grew from 32 to 41, auditor-general Tsakani Maluleke faces an uphill battle as the performance of many municipalities, particularly in the Eastern Cape, Free State and North West have regressed.
In the Eastern Cape, the province’s two metros — Nelson Mandela Bay and Buffalo City metropolitan municipality — received qualified audit opinions with performances going from bad to worse.
In the Free State and North West, not a single municipality received a clean audit.
Maluleke said one had to look beyond the poor performances of the municipalities and look at the tone set by provincial governments and their premiers.
In an in-depth briefing to editors and the media on the audit outcomes of municipalities, after the release of the audit reports last week, Maluleke said if a municipality consistently failed, they needed to look beyond and ask where the MEC of cooperative governance and traditional affairs (Cogta) was and look at the Cogta minister’s interventions.
Of the 257 municipalities in the country, 193 were responsible for fruitless and wasteful expenditure amounting to R1.96bn during the period under review.
“When we’ve looked at the ecosystem [of accountability] we’ve been able to say that if a municipality fails and fails consistently, we must look beyond it to assess where the provincial treasury was when financial management capacity was not being built, because that’s their duty in law.
“Where was the MEC for Cogta when annual financial statements were not submitted on time and poor submissions were the order of the day, and where there’s been no response to AG findings. The law says the MEC of Cogta must, shortly after AG findings are released, compile for the legislature a report that sets out what every municipality is doing in response to AG findings.”
According to Maluleke, the AG’s office had dug deeper to find out why this was not happening, adding that in too many circumstances reports did not reach the legislature, and sometimes when those reports did reach the intended recipients they were not acted upon.
Despite the substantial work the AG has done, its work is limited to the scope and the powers enshrined in the office.
While the auditor-general may issue disclaimers to repeat offenders, it can only make recommendations to institutions such as the Hawks and Financial Intelligence Centre (FIC) for further investigations.
Maluleke said her office has accepted that it can’t do everything and neither should it.
“We’re not responsible for law enforcement and we shouldn’t try to even pretend that’s the case. We’re not going to put people in jail despite the expectation, but we will act on our powers and use our reach and influence to start and change behaviour that is undesirable so we can start to change culture in the public sector.
“Our powers are to audit and report but with the new powers we’re able to issue a material irregularity and if not acted upon we can refer a matter for investigation to the Hawks as we did with Matjhabeng local municipality and the six municipalities referred to the FIC.”
To effect change that would result in services reaching residents and purging the ballooning irregular expenditure, Maluleke said every single part of the accountability ecosystem must be propelled into action.
“The accounting officer is responsible but the mayor also has the responsibility to hold the MM [municipal manager] accountable and if the mayor fails the council must hold the mayor responsible and if council fails then the MEC for Cogta needs to hold council accountable and if they fail the legislature needs to step in.”
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