Africa-Press – South-Africa. The financial state of South Africa’s municipalities has continued to regress over the past year, with only municipalities in the Western Cape and Limpopo showing positive signs of local government turning its financial fortunes around.
The DA-run Western Cape was the best performing province after it received 22 of the 41 clean audits attained by the country’s 257 municipalities, while Limpopo had, over the past five years, seen the most significant improvement in municipal audit outcomes.
Auditor-general Tsakani Maluleke revealed this as she presented the local government audit outcomes for the 2020-2021 financial year on Wednesday.
Maluleke credited the improved audit outcomes in Limpopo municipalities to the “change in tone” by the province’s administration.
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“The premier [Stanley Mathabatha] five years ago set a tone that said we will shift our municipalities out of the declaimer zone, and they will improve,” said Maluleke.
She added that the province also benefitted immensely from the coordinated efforts made by the provincial treasury working together with the provincial Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs.
While she congratulated Limpopo for its efforts, Maluleke hastened to caution the province that its improvements came at a cost, as it had been heavily reliant on expensive external consultation.
“The province [Limpopo] tends to over-rely on using consultants to help them compile their financial statements,” said Maluleka.
Besides the Western Cape, the rest of the 41 clean audits over the past year were in Gauteng, which had two, while five were from the Northern Cape, four in the Eastern Cape, one in Limpopo, four in Mpumalanga, and three in KwaZulu-Natal.
For the fifth year running, not a single Free State municipality received a clean audit, while the North West, which, like the Free State, also under administration, also failed to receive a clean audit.
Maluleke said the system of local government was not making any meaningful improvement in the journey of strengthening institutions, transparency, or performance.
She said that the lack of improvement in municipal outcomes was an “indictment” on the entire local government accountability ecosystem, which failed to act and arrest the decline that continued to be characterised by poor service delivery in municipalities.
“We’ve not seen an improvement. If you compare (the figures) to four or five years ago, there were 33 clean audits – this time, around 41. It’s important to note that the 41 are predominantly district municipalities and one metropole. Very few local municipalities or cities received clean audits.”
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