A-G report: President Ramaphosa’s tough-talk on cleaning up Government, nothing more than hot air

Issued by Haniff Hoosen MP – DA Shadow Minister of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs
20 Nov 2019 in News

The release of the Auditor-General’s Audit Report on Wednesday is a clear indication that all the tough talk on cleaning-up Government is nothing more than hot air which has amounted to nothing. The A-G report has indicated that irregular expenditure at Government Departments increased from R51 billion in the 2017-2018 financial year, to an alarming R62.6 billion in the current financial year.

Despite the sorry state of our economy and  joblessness, National Departments continue to squander money without a shred of accountability.

The 1 percentage-point increase in clean audits from 25% to 26% nationally is, unfortunately, nothing to celebrate as it is a stark reminder that the majority of Departments are completely incapable of managing the people of South Africa’s money properly. This is compounded by the fact that the A-G report revealed that budget expenditure on key programs such as health, school infrastructure, public works and housing stands at 95%, yet none of their targets have been met.

Fat-cat officials are recklessly abusing the public coffers through irregular expenditure whilst our communities are left wanting on the projects and infrastructure they so desperately deserve.

To make matters worse, not a single state-owned entity received a clean audit. This begs to question why Government continues to waste public monies to bailout entity after entity, when they cannot even be trusted to utilise the monies effectively?

Government needs to get serious about cleaning up the rot before it is too late. Effective and efficient governance is possible in South Africa as demonstrated by the Democratic Alliance (DA).

The DA-run Western Cape has once again delivered clean governance results. Fifteen auditees received a clean audit outcome, of which 13 retained their clean audit outcome from the previous year. The Auditor-General went so far as to commend the political and administrative leadership of the province for this noteworthy achievement.

The Auditor-General now also has powers in law to recover fruitless, wasteful and irregular expenditure and the DA will be putting pressure on the Auditor-General to ensure that officials responsible for such expenditures pay back these monies.

Furthermore, the DA agrees with the recommendations made by the A-G, in his call for the elevation and implementation of preventative controls by national management structures, in order to prevent the continued mismanagement of public resources. The DA also agrees with his calls to elevate the role of internal audit committees, so as to ensure a glaring round of consequences for those who continue to increase irregular expenditure.