Western Cape Towns Get Good Marks in SA Audit, PE Gets an F

The Western Cape has received the highest percentage of clean audits of its municipalities, scoring 73 percent, with the next-nearest provinces, Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal, getting 30 percent or just over, according to a report by the auditor general released on Wednesday.

“Today’s release of the Auditor-General’s (A-G) audit report into municipal financial management for 2014/15 has once again placed the DA-run municipalities in the Western Cape at the top of the pile,” the Democratic Alliance said in a statement.

The report showed that only 33 percent of Gauteng municipalities practised good financial management and KwaZulu-Natal 30 percent.

Auditor General Kimi Makwetu also said that irregular expenditure in the country’s municipalities had more than doubled in the past five years, to R14.75 billion, according to news reports. The responsible provinces were North West, Mpumalanga, Eastern Cape and Limpopo.

Those four provinces were also an increase in fruitless and wasteful expenditure, more than R1 billion higher than in 2010-11. Since 2013-14, it was reported, there had been a 96 percent increase from R685 million to R1.34 billion in 2014-15 (apparently a hulking 42 percent of which was attributed to Nelson Mandela Bay/Port Elizabeth).

The DA said that unauthorised expenditure in African National Congress-run municipalities has increased three-fold to an “astronomical” R15.32 billion.