After each of the many Springbok losses former Boks coach Allister Coetzee oversaw, he always found "much positive to build on".
Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs Minister Zweli Mkhize and his deputy, Andries Nel, were like Coetzee when reacting to the auditor-general’s scathing report about financial management at local government level.
The auditor-general reported a 75% deterioration in unauthorised expenditure to R28.3bn — more than the expected income from the increase in the VAT rate.
Team Failing Clean Audit Municipalities trumped team Clean Audit Municipalities by 224–33, like the All Blacks’ 57–0 trashing of the Boks.
In Free State, Limpopo and the North West, the Failing Clean Audit Municipal Team achieved 100% control. Were it not for clean play by ZF Mgcawu and Midvaal, the Northern Cape and Gauteng would have joined the success rate of 100% failure.
Material noncompliance with key legislation reached a record at 86% of municipalities; recommendations on how to improve financial management were ignored; and persistent calls for increased sanctions for noncompliance were also ignored. Staff of the auditor-general’s office received death threats in a bid to change their findings to positive.
The larger municipalities were the most inaccessible: the metros of eThekwini, Mangaung and Msunduzi failed to answer calls within the 250-second allowance
Mkhize stressed the fact that a large percentage of audits were unqualified: "This represents a solid base for national and provincial government’s support programmes to improve financial management in municipalities". Nel said "tremendous progress" was made from 2012 to 2016 and that should be kept in mind.
Mkhize is correct that unqualified audits cannot be equated to corruption or fraud. However, it remains unauthorised, with record levels of "material noncompliance" and no adherence to the auditor-general’s recommendations to improve financial management.
Nel acknowledged that, systemically, no progress was made to institutionalise good financial governance. Picking out the positive, however, is typical Coetzee.
The outcome of the auditor-general’s report was no surprise. The Enterprise Observatory of SA tested 32 municipalities to assess how long it took them to answer their phones. A survey institution was contracted to call 17 of them in the Free State and 15 in KwaZulu-Natal on a Tuesday and Thursday between 9.30am and 11pm. If there was no answer after holding for four-and-a-half minutes, the call was ended. Each municipality was called three times and the average recorded.
The Mafube municipality in Free State’s lines were suspended as Telkom hadn’t been paid. Only three municipalities — Dannhauser, uMhlathuze and Abaqalusi in KwaZulu-Natal — managed to answer the phone on average within 10 seconds.
The larger municipalities were the most inaccessible: the metros of eThekwini, Mangaung and Msunduzi failed to answer calls within the 250-second allowance. Calling Mafube was not a waste time or hope: a robot voice said immediately that the service was suspended. But the metros left callers hanging on in vain, hoping for an intelligent response.
As John Cleese said in his award-winning performance as Brian Stimpson in Clockwise: "It’s not the despair, Laura. I can take the despair. It’s the hope I can’t stand."
Answering the phone appears to be an extremely problematic and challenging task at municipal level. One can therefore imagine how life-threatening compliance with financial laws and regulations could be for officials.
Municipalities are tasked with local economic development. A key strategy is supposedly "improving good governance, service delivery and public and private market confidence in municipalities". The auditor-general’s report torpedoes any pretence of progress or achievement.
The slow answering of phones — or failure to do so — proves municipalities are not accessible.
• Wessels is director of The Enterprise Observatory of SA.
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