Local government has become graft warzone

One of former minister Dr Zweli Mkhize’s trending videos on social media is that of him questioning a mayor at Matjhabeng district municipality in the Free State on an item that appears in their budget.

The flustered official and the municipality’s chief financial officer have no idea why there’s an R18 million item titled “Bonuses” on the budget.

It turns out that some stipends that are meant to be R3 100 for officials on the Expanded Public Works Programme (EPWP) turned into 10 times that, R31 000 per month in the pockets of corrupt officials.

The minister in charge of the public works and infrastructure, the DA’s Dean Macpherson, promptly suspended funds for the EPWP for the municipality to allow investigations to root out the corruption.

The sad part about the decision is that it is a programme meant to provide employment for mainly unemployed youth and, as a result, the suspension means some deserving individuals will suffer because of the decision aimed at rooting out corruption.

While praise should be heaped on Mkhize as cooperative governance and traditional affairs (Cogta) parliamentary committee chair that went to the Free State municipality on an oversight visit, it must be pointed out that this is primarily what was lacking in government for the past 30 years.

The country can celebrate that corruption is being stopped to prevent further waste of funds, but the ANC should not only take this as democracy in action, but as an indication of what has led to its demise at national level.

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This is the kind of oversight that should have been standard in government. That is what parliament is there for, to provide oversight, daily.

Instead of doing this, parliament became a battleground to protect errant and delinquent leaders who have been exposed as lacking.

It seems the local government elections next year carry more significance than last year’s general election that ushered in the era of coalition politics at national level.

So, the likes of the Matjhabeng district municipality should be shaking in their boots at the prospect of being booted out for mismanagement of funds and corruption.

But history has shown that voters are duped into electing leaders who pay themselves first at the expense of providing much-needed work for communities.

Local municipalities all over the country are becoming that which the constitution meant for them to be: the face of government for the man on the street.

ALSO READ: Macpherson suspends all EPWP funds to municipality

That is what Mkhize and Cogta were aiming for in exposing the rot in Matjhabeng.

Sadly, because the advent of the government of national unity (GNU) at national level has closed off a lot of taps that were previously available and unmonitored for tenderpreneurs to loot at will, they have now turned their cunning ways and corrupt practices to loot state funds at local government.

It is no surprise that forensic auditors like Mpho Mafole in the Ekurhuleni municipality and countless others were assassinated in a brazen and alarming manner to cover up the corrupt acts of the political heads of departments.

The coalface of service delivery has become a warzone that is threatening the bedrock of service delivery: honesty in dealing with public funds.

The threat issued by Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana to Joburg mayor Dada Morero is further proof that the GNU has awakened even those within the ANC to the fact that wasteful expenditure and unauthorised spending do not require an outside party to be stopped.

It can be stopped by civil servants doing the jobs they were employed to do in the first place.

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