‘Municipalities have money, it’s the comrades who fail us’ – Outa

Municipalities have money, but mismanagement and the employment of incompetent comrades prevent the entities from performing well.

This is according to the civil rights group, Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (Outa), which was commenting about the Polokwane Municipality’s poor financial management records revealed by its audited annual financial statements.

The statements show that in the past financial year, the municipality incurred unauthorised expenditure of more than R230 million and irregular expenditure of about R222 million, while the fruitless and wasteful expenditure was at more than R10 million.

Be that as it may, the municipality recently received an unqualified report from the auditor-general.

Outa links failures to cadre deployment

Outa CEO Wayne Duvenage said there were many municipalities that have received similar audit findings as that of Polokwane.

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“It’s only the numbers that vary. As we have said for many years now, this is outrageous and unacceptable. What has caused this comes down to cadre deployment in placing people in positions of management and power, that either fall short of the professional skills they require, or are pliable to their political masters, which helps to ensure that corrupt networks get the [inflated] tenders that feed off municipal resources.”

“There are sufficient funds in municipalities to manage them. One only has to go back 20 years and you will find municipalities were paying Eskom and they were maintaining the roads, water and electricity infrastructure,” said Duvenage.

Declining governance and accountability

Duvenage said the municipalities previously had good systems and were collecting revenues.

They also grew their revenue streams well above inflation over the past two decades.

“There is no excuse here, it comes down to poor leadership, which gives rise to a lack of consequences or accountability,” he said.

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“This in turn leads to maladministration, which is precisely the environment that corruption thrives in.

“Corruption, is the main reason billions of rands are collectively lost through many of our failing municipalities, largely those controlled by the ANC, who are unable to contain this problem.”

Economic impact and political pressure

This situation has a direct impact on the local economies and job creation in and around our towns and cities, he said.

“There is a lot of work required to fix our broken municipalities and metros – but probably the easiest is for residents to vote for new leadership and political parties that have a good track record.”

Jacques Joubert, DA spokesperson on finance in the Polokwane municipality, said he was deeply concerned that, despite an improved audit outcome, service delivery in the municipality continues to deteriorate.

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