South Africa’s Municipalities Suck!
Isaac Mangena: If I were doing Auditor-General Terence Nombembe’s job I would be very angry and demoralised about dishing out the same warnings to local governments over the dismal performance of their municipalities every year.
This week was another of those when Nombembe told us how financial management had degenerated over the past three years and irregular expenditure rose from R6 billion in 2010 to R10 billion. He also reminded us how rife corruption is — “beyond tolerable levels”. The reasons for this range from irregular tender processes to poor financial management. Our government led by the ANC should be worried because clearly something is wrong with our local government system if five of our nine provinces (including Gauteng and North West) fail to produce clean audits. Something is wrong if just 13 of our 283 municipalities receive clean audits.
Even worse is when eight metros, including Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town, which are considered well-off with resources and the right people to do the job, fail to impress. But why should Nombembe, or even the public, be surprised by these revelations? They just magnify the embedded rot that is known to be there at local government level. It exposes the incompetence, lack of proper skills, lack of oversight by senior provincial and national leaders, lack of accountability by senior managers, corruption and maladministration, most of which have been identified in the government’s monitoring and frequent presidential visits, but nothing was done.
Maybe we need another monitoring unit to monitor the one appointed a few months ago. The truth is that the government cannot start crying now when it’s all written in the service delivery memoranda every day. The ANC should have raised the alarm when it started to get rejected by the electorate at the local government polls. People cannot be fooled forever. It seems these officials are a law unto themselves. Nombembe highlighted that mayors and local councillors in most of the municipalities that didn’t receive clean audits were warned before, and their reluctance or refusal to act on recommendations and intervention strategies from previous audits led to where we are now. But it cannot all be left to the auditor-general alone to deal with…
Read the rest of Isaac Mangena’s opinion on the state of South African municipalities at Thought Leader.
A more detailed, worthwhile read: http://www.thoughtleader.co.za/williamsaundersonmeyer/2012/07/28/auditor-generals-hand-grenade-fizzles-and-splutters/
It is not only ANC controled municipalities that are getting qualified audits, the DA is doing just as bad. Cader deployment happens across the political spectrum and in many instances it have the result where these deployees must ensure that political connected contractors and business people get the tenders. One will find the majority of problems in the procurement processes of municipalities. Councillors and officials and their families contracting with the municipalities. Clear conflict of interest! There no proper controls in place in the supply chain management units of municipalities. Municipal managers as accounting officers not fulfilling their fiduciary responsibilities in terms of the provisions of sections 61 and 62 of the Municipal Finance Management Act 56 of 2003. You will find at the Eden District municipality for instance an official who resigned before the start of the his disciplinary hearing because it was allegedly found that he was involved in tender fraud. When the DA took control in June 2011 that same official was again appointed in the finance departement despite the fact that a criminal case was opened with the Hawks. The people are loosing faith in the political and administrative proceses in this country and we will find ourselves in big trouble when that ticking time bomb is going to explode. Be warned!
This blog started because the local DA drowned themselves in lies. Their handling of the municipal manager position was an additional ghastliness that cost the taxpayer a fortune. BUT i try be evenhanded (undoubtedly why i’m regularly in the shit) and in this case that means that overall, the Western Province, under the DA, has returned better results than ANC provinces. Of course, then in agreement with you, that doesn’t mean that they don’t act with self-interest or deploy cadres into municipal positions (they were clever enough not to call it that…just as the USA were clever enough not to label their racism apartheid and put it into law). That “ticking time bomb” is very real, scares the hell out of me, and is a primary reason for all my Knysna websites. Sadly, i feel like a boy with a thumb in a hole in a dam that will only, inevitably, crack and flood us all. South Africa needs a WAKE-UP call! The public has to demand and enforce a responsible and honourable political system backed by a similarly guided police force.