LUCAS LEDWABA
PARLIAMENT recently asked the SA Local Government Association a question that’s probably on the lips of many citizens worried by the recent distressing audit outcomes by Auditor-General advocate Kimi Makwetu.
Why was corruption in municipalities still on the rise when the number of councillors attending training facilitated by SALGA was increasing every year?
This is what a joint sitting of the Portfolio Committee on Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (COGTA) as well as the Select Committee on Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs, Water and Sanitation and Human Settlements wanted to know from SALGA officials who were there to present the organisation’s budget.
SALGA is a Schedule 3A public entity.
Its role is to help ‘transform local government to enable it to fulfil its development mandate.’
This includes capacity-building, supporting, advising, sharing knowledge and information and playing an oversight role among its 257 local government members.
But here’s the catch – SALGA doesn’t have the legal powers to take action against errant municipalities like Mogalakwena, which failed to submit material for this year’s audit to Makwetu’s office.
The body, according to statutes, can only advice and intervene through training and offering support where necessary.
Perhaps it’s important to go back to SALGA’s response to parliament’s paramount question on the rise in corruption in municipalities.
SALGA said it would roll out the Municipal Performance Management Training Programme in response to the concern raised by parliament.
The organisation’s president Thembi Nkadimeng, mayor of the Polokwane Local municipality, which achieved a clean audit, added that in addition the organisation will convene the 4th Annual Local Government Performance Management Seminar by March next year.
Nkadimeng said the entity will further roll-out the Municipal Performance Management Training Programme as well as consolidate an integrated capacity building implementation as a means to improve capacity-building in local government.
This kind of response would have been ideal and promising if Makwetu’s findings were perhaps indicating that 90% of municipalities were meeting their financial management obligations.
It also raises a critical question – should SALGA still be spending taxpayer’s money on such initiatives as training workshops when it is clear these have not worked and are not working?
Doesn’t the rot at local government which is in ICU perhaps require action much more tougher than workshops?
Last week, Makwetu’s findings made headlines yet again, for all the wrong reasons.
Makwetu’s office audited 257 municipalities and 21 municipal entities.
He said the audits of 28 municipalities had not yet been completed by the 31 January 2020 cut-off date.
Disturbingly, the AG’s office noted that over the three-year period, the audit outcomes of 76 municipalities regressed with those of only 31 improving.
The irregular and wasteful expenditure bill stood at R32 billion and only 20 municipalities received clean audits.
In any other normal democratic society, such findings would have sparked all manner of protests, petitions, calls for resignations and prosecutions.
But perhaps SA citizens should not be blamed for this kind of indifference to matters that impact directly on their daily lives.
The bar has long been set too low and maybe they have come to expect mediocrity as a welcome part of life.
South Africans, like a partner in an abusive relationship, have become indifferent to poor governance, corruption, the arrogance and lack of moral authority of those who occupy the seat of government.
Like this abused partner, they just take the endless blows and the pain that comes with it in the form of poor service delivery with an unexplained tolerance.
Soon the little noise raised after Makwetu’s report was released last week will become a thing of the past, hushed by yet another scandal.
SALGA rightly pointed out that Makwetu’s audit report outcomes “highlight a lack of accountability and consequence management by municipal leadership.”
But who doesn’t know this?
Has this not been said repeatedly by Makwetu during his six years in office?
Why is the public still being told the obvious?
By way of a solution, SALGA added that the ‘picture before us can only change if municipal management and leadership are held accountable…’
By way of providing some solution to the debacle, SALGA mentioned that its national executive committee resolved at its special meeting on 18 June to, among others, communicate directly with mayors and accounting officers of municipalities who have transgressed in terms of relevant legislation to demand accountability.
It also called on municipalities to develop audit response plans that are to be monitored on a quarterly basis, conduct skills assessment in municipal finance units and for senior managers to be subjected to professional bodies in their profession to oversee their professional conduct.
SALGA also said a multi-stakeholder audit steering committee consisting of national treasury and COGTA has been formed to monitor the implementation of municipal audit response plans.
It also said treasury will also be encouraged to implement section 216 of the Constitution to withhold equitable share in order to address financial misconduct in municipalities.
It all sounds well and good, on paper at least.
The big question is why after so many years of mismanagement and total disregard for audit outcomes, we are yet to hear of a mayor, a municipal manager, chief financial officer or councillor, having their assets attached or jailed for misusing of public funds?
SALGA and the AG can recommend action – but will it ever be carried out in this environment where political patronage rules supreme?
Can jackals really be expected to police their own against a kraal full of lambs?
These grand plans and flowery language have failed to stop the rot.
Some municipalities have continued to show disdain to the AG’s office because they know very well no action would be taken against them.
It’s a free for all that has seen the emergence of a disturbing culture where some go as far as threatening auditors in their quest to unearth the truth.
In November 2018, the parliamentary standing committee on the Auditor-General met to discuss threats, intimidation and attacks on staff from Makwetu’s office.
The meeting which was also attended by a delegation from the SAPS heard that audit staff were ‘being put under unnecessary threat to their lives in incidents that included hostage-taking, threats, threatening phone calls and attacks on the vehicles of auditors.
In one instance an auditor was attacked in a guest house and shot at. These incidents indicate the daring lengths those who have made a career out of stealing and misusing public funds have adopted to hide their crimes.
This king of gangsterism would have brought about even sterner reaction from the state.
But so far the only action has remained tough talk through statements and speeches.
In the absence of austere action against the rot – perhaps we should all just let the looters be, satisfy their greed until there’s nothing left to steal and service delivery comes to a complete breakdown.
It is only then when the coffers run dry, that we will perhaps confiscate all the mayoral chains, recycle the material they are made of and sell them to raise funds so we can start from scratch. It would obviously be too late by then.