PALI LEHOHLA | Why numerical conscience succeeds where legislation fails

The 2026 Consolidated General Report on National and Provincial Audit Outcomes, released this week by Auditor-General Tsakani Maluleke, is a document of fiscal deviance and a scathing testament to a nation that has lost the fundamental discipline of the “M-Plan”.

As Maluleke spits fire over R42bn misspent and a “culture of impunity” that has become the bedrock of the state, we are forced to confront a singular, uncomfortable truth: South Africa is suffering from a catastrophic collapse of scenario competence.

In the quiet of his cell on Robben Island, Nelson Mandela wrote to Adelaide Tambo with a clarity that seems alien to the current crop of successor sages. He understood that “significant progress is always possible if we ourselves plan every detail and allow intervention of fate only on our own terms.”

For Madiba and the Rivonia triallists, planning was not a “lonely partner” like our current National Development Plan (NDP), which is gathering dust in a corner while the nation burns. To them, planning was a psychological necessity — a forensic shield that allowed men on death row to survive three decades without a single betrayal.

General Dwight D Eisenhower, the architect of D-Day, famously remarked that “plans are worthless, but planning is everything.” This distinction is core. A “plan” is a static scripture; “planning” is an active engagement with a changing reality. Our current NDP has become a dead letter precisely because it lacks the “Valentine moment” of engagement. Over the past 14 years, while the script has remained the same, the results have worsened.

We see this failure in the “raw hard sewer” that flows where bread should be, and the “unsavoury gush of green liquid” that replaces blue-label tap water. These service delivery failures are symptoms of a systemic inability to calibrate a post-apartheid posture in a world currently gripped by the spectre of a third world war and the prolonged crisis of post-US-Israel aggression against Iran.

I warned my late colleague, former auditor-general Kimi Makwetu, that his Public Audit Amendment Act — though well-intended to stop the rot — was a serious betrayal. He gave the auditor-general an okapi to chase criminals, while the owners of the sword — the executive — used that very sword for support to keep from falling into a deep sleep.

South Africa once successfully scaffolded the Second Industrial Revolution on the pentagon of Race, Rail, Maize, Gold and War. Jan Smuts gifted a platform that, however tragically it served apartheid, thrived on a rigorous internal logic. Today, we have allowed the Fourth Industrial Revolution to bypass us entirely because we have traded the discipline of the Rivonia triallists for a “daily free meal” of administrative slumber.

I warned my late colleague, former auditor-general Kimi Makwetu, that his Public Audit Amendment Act (PAAA) — though well-intended to stop the rot — was a serious betrayal. He gave the auditor-general an okapi to chase criminals, while the owners of the sword — the executive — used that very sword for support to keep from falling into a deep sleep. By shifting the burden of consequence management to the AG, the executive successfully moved the monkey to the AG’s back.

Now Tsakani Maluleke stands alone, exonerating my misgivings. She warns that slight improvements in financial management cannot pull the state out of its current strain. When only 151 out of 417 auditees achieve clean audits ― representing a mere 12% of government’s total expenditure ― “material irregularity” describes a national emergency. The 266 institutions responsible for 88% of spending have failed the test of basic institutional capability.

How did the Rivonia generation survive the physical and psychological attrition of death row? It wasn’t luck but the scenario competence of the M-Plan.

• Strategic integrity: they shared a scenario where liberation was larger than the individual. Today, we see a failure through impunity, where R42bn is lost in a time of peace and relative resource abundance.
• Planning-to-execution ratio: Mandela and Adelaide Tambo’s mesh correspondence was “planning under fire”. The metadata of their communication had to be perfect to ensure the movement’s survival. Today, 96% of housing projects fail because the “planning” is a fiction.
• Data pedigree: the metadata of the struggle was mission-critical. Today, 31% of performance reports are “unreliable”, making accountability a mathematical impossibility.

Modern leaders like Donald Trump may prefer Mike Tyson’s version: “Everyone has a plan until they get hit in the mouth.” Or perhaps the words of one of Trump’s predecessors, Eisenhower, hold more weight: “plans are worthless, but planning is everything.”

Even the BBC’s Jeremy Bowen, in headlining “Trump is waging war based on instinct and it isn’t working,” anchors his thesis in the historical observation of Helmuth von Moltke the Elder, who wrote in 1871: “No plan survives first contact with the enemy.”

But South Africa’s “enemy” is not external force; it is the internal decay of our own institutional capability. We have been “hit in the mouth” by the 2026 AG report, yet we continue to stumble without an active engagement in planning. We are waging a war based on instinct and political survival, and it is clearly not working.

I propose that there’s a pathway back to the discipline of the ‘death row’ logic. It is the foundation that requires us to move beyond “10 Christmas toys every two years” and towards a university harvest of 50%, not the current average of 12%.

It is essential that we use a detailed longitudinal mesh to authenticate the essence of our analysis. We must trace the mesh across the 1996, 2001, 2011 and 2022 censuses to reveal the truth of our place names.

• The mesh as the new M-Plan: just as Mandela used the M-Plan to organise the streets, we must use the mesh to organise our data. We must look at the statistics at place names within a ward to authenticate the essence of the analysis.
• Valid metadata: we must stop accepting “unqualified with findings” as a good outcome. If the metadata is invalid, the governance is a ghost.
• Scenario competence: we must calibrate our post-apartheid posture to meet the Eisenhower version of planning. We must be etched in detailed scenarios that can withstand the “first contact” of the global crises ahead.

Nowhere is this failure more visible than in the Eastern Cape, where unsettled claims against departments have risen to R116bn, with the health sector accounting for R58bn. In the Sterkspruit-Mlamli corridor, there’s a density of despair. By aggregating the mesh contiguously over time periods, we see that while population and need have grown, the master plan has been ignored. The R22.15bn legal burden in this province is the numerical cost of a leadership that has traded the “sword” for a nap. Yet a solution is available and inspiration and grounding is possible from Madiba and his compatriots. Their soul is longing to help.

The auditor-general’s fire is a call for the medicine Madiba prescribed. Without the art of detailed planning and the nerves steeled in bravery, progress is impossible.

The chickens have indeed come home to roost. Makwetu’s PAAA, despite its noble intent, left the AG with an okapi against a systemic rot that required a constitutional sword. It is time to clear the coop and return to the rigorous, detail-oriented planning that once held a movement together in the shadow of the gallows. We must reclaim the discipline of the master weaver, for without planning, the state dissolves.

Dr Pali Lehohla is a professor of practice at the University of Johannesburg, a research associate at Oxford University and a distinguished alumni of the University of Ghana. He is the former statistician-general of South Africa