Cholera shouldn’t surprise us after terrible municipal audit outcomes

Extreme maintenance underspend, including on water infrastructure,  a lack of basic accounting controls and persistently bad audit results. The latest Auditor General report shows that cholera outbreaks are to be expected.

Auditor General Tsakani Maluleke as she entered parliament yesterday to present the MFMA report

Yesterday people in suits explained to other people in suits how,  in municipalities across the country, more people in suits misspent, misplanned, mismanaged and generally stole money while those in shacks and RDP houses boil water between load shedding – desperately trying to avoid cholera.

“I think if anyone of us don’t become emotional on this matter, then there is something wrong with us,” Narend Singh,  an MP from the IFP, told the Standing Committee on the Auditor General after hearing the office’s latest MFMA report. 

“Deterioration continues,” Auditor General Tsakani Maluleke told the media yesterday. Maluleke was speaking about audit outcomes, but “deterioration continues” seems an appropriate theme for the entire report. 

The headline numbers are bleaker than last year, depending on which way you squint at it. Clean audits at the municipal level are down from 41 to 38. Outstanding audits are up from 3 to 16. Some provinces, such as the Free State, are doing better from a low base. Others like Gauteng are worse. But overall, the outcomes stink.

The deterioration is in the details

Average maintenance spend stood at four percent, and 39 percent of municipalities spent one percent or less of their budget on fixing the things holding society together with what feels like insulation tape and a cable tie.

“In far too many instances, municipalities are failing to provide for the deterioration of their assets,” said Maluleke. “The fact that there is no budget to prepare for that tells you that there is inadequate attention to not just regular maintenance but for providing for the type of capital that will be required to replace that infrastructure.” 

The report notes multiple instances of broken water infrastructure across the country. For in the JB Marks Local Municipality, “The Tshing extension 8 pump station has been completely vandalised, causing untreated wastewater to flow into the environment next to the wastewater treatment works and pump station. The Ventersdorp town pump station also remains dilapidated, and sewage has been overflowing into the adjacent Schoonspruit since 2016 with no evidence of any steps being taken to rectify the situation.” 

Lack of maintenance isn’t the only accounting failure sending money and effluent down broken drains. Two-thirds of municipalities lack proper record keeping, 77 percent lack daily and monthly controls. Many municipalities continue to suck at both debt collection and paying suppliers on time.

So where are the accountants, and why aren’t they doing some accounting?

The average finance unit vacancy is 22 percent, and 70 percent of municipalities with disclaimers or adverse findings don’t have a municipal manager. However, “The issue is less about vacancies and more about lack of skills,” says Maluleke. “There are far too many people appointed in key roles in the finance function who don’t have the skills to do what’s required.”

In those suffering from cholera, hydration is an essential treatment. Antibiotics might be helpful to shorten the duration or in extreme circumstances, but it won’t work by itself. Hydration remains essential.  

Eighty-four percent of municipalities used consultants last year. Like antibiotics, the Auditor General believes consultants can be useful, they’re however, no substitute for skilled professionals. 62 percent of the time, the consultants’ work contained material misstatements – often due to lack of documents and records, poor project management, or because they were called in too late.  

A better solution? “What we should all be building towards is professionalising the public service,” says Maluleke. However, until the professionalisation of the public service moves from an idea into one day, someday, maybe, potentially, reality – Maluleke has another tool or weapon, perhaps.

“AG you are the sheriff, and material irregularities are your AK47,” MP Ntokozo Hlonyana from the EFF told the committee. “If you point them properly in the right direction, then you will find accounting officers telling their handlers, ‘the AK47 is facing my way and now I need to comply’.”

The Auditor General aimed her material irregularities powers in 268 different directions during the last budget period, including 29 cases of ‘substantial harm to the general public’ for poor landfill management of pollution of water resources.

Unlike sewage pipes that rapidly flow into rivers, the material irregularities pipeline is necessarily long. Accounting officers are notified, and there are recommendations, remedial actions and eventually, referrals to the SIU or Hawks or certificates of debt are issued.

The Auditor General claims that despite no marked change in headline audit outcome numbers, this weapon is working, accounting officers are reacting, and the office is able to recover millions. The material irregularity framework focuses on convincing people to do their jobs, a theme throughout the office’s work.

Maluleke often refers to the “accountability ecosystem,” which includes not only those in municipalities, but also provincial and national legislatures, who are supposed to perform an oversight function. When Maluleke was in parliament in March, she politely asked parliamentarians to do their part. 

According to the authors of the chapter Implications of Sewage Discharge on Freshwater Ecosystems in the book Sewage, “Loss of biodiversity, physiological and behavioural changes in species, community shifts, and fish mortality have been witnessed in aquatic ecosystems, which are the recipients of untreated or partially treated sewage.

It may be fear of political mortality with national and provincial elections looming, but Maluleke claims parliamentarians and provincial entities are reacting to her call.

The Auditor General returns year upon year with better graphs and information explaining how an absence of basic accounting: internal controls, budgeting, and planning leads to sewage flowing past deteriorated or unbuilt facilities. 

Despite this Maluleke remains optimistic. Her theme for this year isn’t “deterioration continues”, its “a culture of accountability will improve service delivery.” It seems ridiculous, but the alternative is despondency – it’s tough to inspire the accountability ecosystem with despondency.

However, for those communities exposed to cholera, despondency seems rational. In the words of the Honorable Singh, “You know I’ve sat on this committee for years, and it’s the same, old same old de ja vu”.