MARIANNE MERTEN: G20 talkshop will pass, but accountability battle remains in SA

The giddiness over this weekend’s G20 summit may trump the cynic’s take on Jozi’s select pothole-free roads and working streetlights along the routes to the meeting venue, but the real test will be whether a “Johannesburg Declaration” is adopted and in what form.

SA is a gracious host and will roll out the red carpet, even in the absence of the next G20 chair, the US, a reduced Russian delegation and whatever other twists may present in today’s disrupted, populism-leaning and conflict-dominated global geopolitics.

Away from the G20 spotlight two consequential developments have unfolded – the information regulator’s enforcement notice for the SA Revenue Service (Sars) to comply with a request for the release of former president Jacob Zuma’s tax documents and the auditor-general’s first personal cost order for a sustained material irregularity.

Getting there has taken about six years in each case, but both are crucial for good governance and accountability, and for embedding the principles of responsiveness, transparency and accountability.

Information regulator chair Pansy Tlakula issued an enforcement notice for Sars to release documents related to Zuma’s tax affairs, which investigative outfit amaBhungane and a Financial Mail reporter requested in 2019, because of legitimate and serious questions over Zuma’s tax compliance.

Questions have also arisen over whether Sars soft-pedalled with Zuma, even after the damage wrought by Tom Moyane at the tax authority was exposed by investigative reporting and Zondo state capture commission testimony.

The regulator’s notice earlier in November emphasised the public interest override, according to amaBhungane, to ensure “important information is disclosed to the public when transparency and accountability justify disclosure above the competing interests”.

It had approached the information regulator after Sars again declined in December 2023 to release the requested documents. On May 30 of that year the Constitutional Court had ruled unconstitutional both SA’s tax law and the Promotion of Access to Information Act, because neither allowed tax information disclosure in the public interest.

Unfortunately, the information regulator has not yet published its enforcement notice on its website. It also took the auditor-general some time to publicly announce its first certificate of debt made possible under the 2019 Public Audit Amendment Act.

Meanwhile, a personal cost order of more than R4.5m was served on Ngaka Modiri Molema district municipality municipal manager Allan Losaba for overpayments for mileage and working hours to a water tanker service provider. This issue was flagged in the 2018/19 audit and in subsequent years, according to the office of the auditor-general, whose documents show a string of adverse and disclaimed audits for this North West council over the past five years.

The water tanker saga became a case study as Losaba did nothing to recover misspent monies. Now the municipal manager has to pay from his own pocket, plus possible interest, while 12 other water projects at the municipality have come under public scrutiny for corruption and fraud after police raided the municipality in late October.

For auditor-general Tsakane Maluleke the personal debt order is not the be-all and end-all. She wrote in the office’s 2025 annual report that “true success is when the [material irregularity] mechanism triggers accounting officers to correct and improve their financial management systems to avoid recurrence of transgressions ... resulting in a positive shift in public sector culture”.

The next steps will be telling. Will the municipality try to vote away the irregularity? Or will the municipality, municipal manager, Zuma or Sars go to court to appeal the orders against them? If these orders hold despite litigation or political headwinds, it will signal that the gears of SA’s accountability machinery may grind slowly, but they get the job done eventually. That’s crucial.

• Merten is a veteran political journalist specialising in parliament and governance.