By Akani Nkuna
OR Tambo District Municipality municipal manager Basil Mase told Parliament on Tuesday that the municipality has made substantial progress towards stability and reducing irregular and wasteful expenditure that had become synonymous with the district in recent years, following intensified revenue and debt collection efforts.
The OR Tambo District Municipality and Buffalo City Metro Municipality appeared before the Standing Committee on Public Accounts (SCOPA) and the Portfolio Committee on Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (COGTA) to discuss their latest audit outcomes and investigations by the Special Investigating Unit (SIU).
Mase told SCOPA that the district’s executive mayor implemented a National Treasury-sanctioned Recovery Plan, which helped reduce the municipality’s debt from R442 million in 2022, when the current administration assumed office, to R32 million.
He said the remaining amount would be paid off by June this year.
This, he added, comes while the municipality currently holds more than R1 billion in its coffers.
“When the Executive Mayor takes this organisation back to the electorate, he will hand over an organisation that is free of debt and owing no one,” Mase said.
“When this council took office in November 2021, the municipality’s coffers reflected a negative balance. Currently we have about R1.3 billion in the bank — of which R294 million is allocated to grants — but we have more than R1 billion of our own funds in the bank.”
In March 2025, SCOPA conducted a week-long oversight visit to the municipality, alongside updates from the Auditor-General (AG) and SIU on audit outcomes and investigations into allegations of unauthorised expenditure totalling R547.27 million and wasteful expenditure of R5.44 million, linked to delayed infrastructure projects and financial mismanagement by municipal officials.
Mase said the municipality had taken the recommendations of the SIU and the AG seriously and had established a framework to recover the money, including initiating legal proceedings against officials implicated in benefiting unfairly from municipal funds.
He also rejected accusations by the SIU that municipal officials had failed to cooperate with investigations into financial mismanagement.
“We dispute that with all the disgust it deserves,” Mase said.
“All the officials flagged in the report as having committed irregular activities, and whom we were directed to act against, we have done so without fear or favour. We will deal with the reports from the officers appointed to handle these cases.”
Mase added that irregular expenditure has decreased to R464 million, assuring the committee that the figure would decline further by the end of the year as financial control processes take effect.
While unauthorised expenditure amounted to R572.77 million, he attributed this largely to National Treasury reporting procedures, saying the municipality had complied with these requirements and that the figure had already been significantly reduced.
A revised figure, he said, would be published in the municipality’s annual report in June.
Mase also welcomed the municipality’s improved revenue collection, saying it had surpassed projections and would accelerate financial recovery.
“In January 2026 we projected to collect R1.8 billion, but we ended up collecting R2 billion, meaning we exceeded our projections by the end of January,” he said.
“We had projected to spend about R961 million, but we spent R778 million, largely because of the stringent financial management systems we have put in place.”
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