South Africa’s future is extremely bright. Make no mistake about it, the ANC will make for a fantastic opposition party. That’s because the ANC knows exactly where the problems lie, how our politicians exploit weaknesses in the system so they can be corrupt, and even how to fix these problems (if they were not too busy looting).
Whoever wins the many by-elections we are going through right now, plus the provincial and national elections next year, voters must pray for the ANC to be in the main opposition benches. It will keep our future leaders honest.
Or maybe not.
The National Council of Provinces’ select committee on co-operative governance & traditional affairs, water & sanitation & human settlements (with a long name like that, what, pray tell, do its members actually do?) spent all of last week in Gauteng, looking into municipalities and probing their strengths and deficiencies. China Dodovu, one of the ANC’s bright sparks and chair of the select committee, issued a statement on Saturday.
“We must be frank that the main challenge within the local sphere of government is the lack of appetite to implement effective consequence management, which then encourages a self-seeking culture of corruption and undermining of service delivery,” he said.
Well, well, well, I said, when I read the statement. Consequence management, you say? So, the ANC knows that the reason there is so much corruption is because the perpetrators know that they will never get arrested, tried or punished!
I have not seen much “consequence management” in the collapsed or collapsing municipalities that the ANC has run over the past 29 years. In June auditor-general Tsakani Maluleke said just 38 out of 257 municipalities achieved a clean audit in 2021/2022. Irregular expenditure — that’s stolen money to you and me — in local government in that period stood at R30bn.
The municipality is now able to pay only salaries. Yes, no services are being provided in Emfuleni right now
Dodovu may be interested to know that back in 2017 the then auditor-general, Kimi Makwetu, who began his tenure in 2013, sharply criticised municipalities for ignoring his advice to punish perpetrators. Only 33 of the 257 municipalities assessed got a clean audit in the 2016/2017 financial year.
So where has the “consequence management” been all this time? We are in the same place we were 10 years ago.
In September 2022, the Sowetan newspaper reported that the Ditsobotla local municipality in North West had had 14 municipal managers, four mayors, and four speakers in the six years since 2016. Last month, Ditsobotla got yet another “new” mayor. In a few months’ time there will be another change. Meanwhile, the place has collapsed: gaping potholes, no services, and businesses such as Clover have closed their factories and fled the place.
Consequences? No consequences. None. Zero. If it really was interested in consequences, the committee could have demanded that some heads roll in Emfuleni municipality, where the members found that “the municipality recorded a 172% increase in unauthorised, irregular, fruitless and wasteful expenditure”. This, they said, is “an environment that will encourage acts of corruption”. You don’t say.
The place is already dead under the weight of corruption. The accounts have been attached by Eskom due to debt of R6.5bn. The municipality is now able to pay only salaries. Yes, no services are being provided in Emfuleni right now. Meanwhile, the municipality has spent more than R6m on lawyers in the past year to discipline its suspended CFO.
Last Friday, Dodovu and his committee focused on Tshwane. Out of 11 municipalities in Gauteng, only Midvaal and Ekurhuleni got clean audits. Dodovu said he is worried that Tshwane is struggling to fill critical vacant positions, including that of CFO.
I am glad for this bolt of insight from the committee. They clearly have not been following the auditor-general’s reports closely, otherwise they would know that, back in 2017 and for years before that, Makwetu had begged municipalities to fill “vacancies in critical areas such as municipal managers, CFOs, heads of supply chain management and chief information officers, and generally ensuring an appropriate level of financial management capacity in a municipality”.
Yet the Ditsobotlas and Emfulenis of our country grind on, making poor people poorer every day. Our failures of the past 15 years are not because the ANC does not know what needs to be done, but because it has flourished in the corruption it has fostered.
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.