Poor municipal audits leaving residents without reliable services — finance MEC Dunga

Gauteng residents are paying the price for poor municipal finances with billions lost to irregular spending, affecting transport, infrastructure and other basic services.

This was the warning from Gauteng finance MEC Nkululeko Dunga during a press briefing at the Makause informal settlement on Sunday.

According to Dunga, the province’s municipal audit outcomes had regressed, with only two of Gauteng’s 11 municipalities achieving clean audits.

“Three municipalities, the City of Tshwane, Merafong City and Emfuleni Local Municipality, remained on qualified audit opinions, while both the City of Johannesburg and the City of Ekurhuleni slipped from unqualified to qualified audits.

“Tshwane alone has accumulated R12.17bn in irregular expenditure, R5.22bn in unauthorised expenditure and R3.61bn in fruitless and wasteful expenditure over four years, the highest irregular expenditure of any municipality in this province,” said Dunga.

He said its financial mismanagement had contributed to R5.23bn in water losses and R10.40bn in electricity losses, with residents in Soshanguve and Mamelodi continuing to bear the cost of crumbling infrastructure.

Johannesburg’s regression also had serious consequences for ordinary residents.

“Johannesburg’s unauthorised, irregular, fruitless and wasteful expenditure means that a landfill site was mismanaged to the point of harming the public. A bus station stands under-utilised while commuters in Soweto and Alexandra wait longer for reliable transport, and a water source was polluted in the very year residents needed it clean,” Dunga said.

He described Ekurhuleni’s regression as even more concerning. Saying the metro had accumulated hundreds of millions of rand in irregular, unauthorised and fruitless expenditure while residents continued to live with polluted water sources and poor service delivery.

Dunga said the province deliberately chose Makause informal settlement as the venue for the announcement because audit outcomes should no longer be treated as figures confined to government reports.

“We have come to say to the people of Makause and to the people of Gauteng: what the auditor-general calls a ‘qualified audit opinion’, what the auditor-general calls ‘material irregularities’ … is not an abstraction. It is the water your children drink. It is the toilet that has not been cleaned in weeks. It is the ambulance that cannot reach your gate.”

He said the conditions in Makause reflected what poor financial governance ultimately looked like in communities across Gauteng.

“Makause is not unique. What we see here is no different to what we would see if we stood in Khutsong, in Soshanguve, in Alexandra or in Sicelo. The same pattern repeats itself across this province.”

He added: “Across Gauteng, municipalities incurred R14.44bn in irregular expenditure during the 2024/25 financial year alone, while cumulative irregular expenditure during the current administration has reached R45.92bn.

Dunga called for stronger consequences against accounting officers and municipal managers who fail to address material irregularities, saying unresolved audit findings ultimately deny residents the quality services they deserve.

Sowetan