EDITORIAL | Tough line on municipalities must be welcomed

We should all thank finance minister Enoch Godongwana for cracking the whip and loudly demanding financial accountability from municipalities. For too long they have squandered public money, even as the services they deliver have deteriorated despite staff numbers rising exponentially.

It is all very well for MPs to haul the minister before a joint committee to explain, as they did this week, when those same MPs have failed to bring councils into line despite years of damning reports from the auditor-general. The most recent, for 2024/25, found that only 39 municipalities — or 15% of the total — received clean audits, while 84 showed “disregard for legislation and a lack of consequence management”.

Godongwana has chosen the national government’s “equitable share”, paid to municipalities, as the lever in his battle against financial delinquency. Top of the list is Joburg, whose R3.5bn is being withheld pending negotiations with the National Treasury over its unfunded budget.

Sixty-nine municipalities have been targeted for three main infractions:

• unfunded budgets;
• failure to meet statutory obligations to Sars, Eskom and pension funds; and
• fruitless and wasteful expenditure of R24bn, irregular expenditure of R145bn, and unauthorised expenditure of R118bn since 2021.

Godongwana has warned they will have to make “painful adjustments” as the government moves to introduce “ring-fencing”, under which revenue raised may not be used for any other purpose.

The South African Local Government Association has warned that Godongwana’s actions could compromise service delivery. Yet the Treasury has set out clear steps municipalities must take to get themselves off the blacklist.

If they won’t get their houses in order, they will find themselves facing a Treasury that is holding the line against the sort of extravagance the country can hardly afford.