In her report released in December, auditor-general (AG) Tsakani Maluleke found that reasonable steps had not been taken by the City of Joburg toprevent wasteful expenditure of R500m in the financial year ending June 2022.
Nor were such steps taken to prevent noncompliance with supply chain regulations, leading to the irregular expenditure of more than R3bn. Underpinning this, the AG noted, was a lack of consequence management. No investigations were done to find out who was responsible. Half of the investigations from issues flagged in previous reports were done internally and it is unclear what consequences were adhered to.
Others were said to be ongoing. The kind of wastage and irregularity mentioned is what happens where there is a culture of no oversight, a lack of adherence to internal controls and political accountability in a metro.
On Friday, we reported that the council of Joburg had postponed yet another sitting on Wednesday, this time because the council chambers had no electricity or water. The irony.
Granted, the meeting was not one of the compliance meetings that are constitutionally mandated to sit within certain periods. But it was about the business of council, which is as vitally important.
The agenda listed performance reports of departments and entities meant to be discussed. It listed supply chain management reports for bid adjudication committees and tender deviations going as far back as July last year.
It is through these that the bulk of the city’s money is spent on projects. Yet the decisions of these committees and the accounting officer have not received the level of oversight and public scrutiny they ought to have to ensure compliance with legislation.
Council meetings sit as and when dictated to by political machinations that serve individual interests rather than the responsibility of fixing an increasingly broken city. This lack of open and transparent oversight cannot be divorced from the culture of poor performance and malfeasance in its administration.
Johannesburg is falling apart because the people voted into power to fix it could not be bothered to carry out their most basic functions in the interest of the people.
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