Auditor-general Tsakani Maluleke says there is a need to professionalise local government to ensure functional municipalities and improved service delivery.
Professionalised administrations would be able to withstand the instability that comes with changes in councils that have so far been disruptive to the pace of service delivery, affecting some key decisions such as the passing of budgets and filling of vacant posts.
“The instability at councils has also been a major feature in terms of the lack of capacity and the lack of discipline to drive reliable reporting on financial management,” said Maluleke on Wednesday.
“What tends to happen is when there is a change in the mayor, there tends to be a change in the mayoral council and then the pace of continuing to deal with services gets disrupted because either the direction changes, and there are periods that need to be put in place to ensure the new leadership acquaint themselves with the matters at hand.”
Another feature is that vacancies go unfilled for a great deal longer when there is that level of instability at the political level, she said.
The AG said instability at local government has had a negative impact on how municipalities function and in their attempts to meet acceptable standards of good governance.
Presenting the latest municipal audit outcomes to parliament on Wednesday, Maluleke noted the year under review (July 2021 — June 2022) was one of transitions for many councils after the November 2021 municipal elections.
“In that transition there was great instability in a number of auditees (municipalities), as a number of councils took some time to stabilise.”
As a result the ability to respond to audit findings and audit matters was really constrained.
When you’ve got this type of instability continuing in this way, it tells us we have not yet institutionalised the key controls that make for strong administrations that perform consistently over different periods
— Tsakani Maluleke
The instability and impact on audit outcomes was also consistent with the impact on the actual service delivery at municipal level, said Maluleke.
This highlighted that the deterioration of public institutions in the local government sphere continues.
“When you’ve got this type of instability continuing in this way, it tells us we have not yet institutionalised the key controls that make for strong administrations that perform consistently over different periods.”
She said over the years, local government institutions have continued to deteriorate and the impact is seen in poor service delivery, the continued deterioration of infrastructure, and the inability to put projects on the ground. This is also seen in the growing trust deficit between local government and citizens.
“A major insight now is that it is urgent that there be attention to building stronger institutions at local government level, and attention paid by those elected and appointed to run those institutions but also other players in the accountability ecosystem.”
A key solution would be to professionalise local government and to look at the key instruments that impede the role of councils and the decisions they should make regarding the tenure of those who run administrations, she said.
“There are particular legislated duties attached to council that go unattended for as long as the council itself is unstable and unable to contend with matters of running the institution such as the approval of adjustment budgets.
“We’ve seen in a number of institutions over the recent period where the instability at council level has made it difficult for service delivery plans to be adjusted in the way they should be.”
Professionalising local government would entail giving tenure, ensuring there is a level of competence associated with those appointed, a code of ethics that applies to the professionals in that environment and that those things are monitored on a regular basis.
It would also entail ensuring people in the roles at administrative level have service orientation and their performance is monitored regularly and where things go wrong, they are set on the right path, said Maluleke.
She said the professionalisation framework approved by the cabinet, if appropriately and decisively implemented across all three spheres of government, “we could end up with a much more professional public service, one that is attractive to professionals and is characterised by performance as well as ongoing development”.
“When I say it is urgent that we build these institutions, it starts with the call to action we’ve given around professionalising local government.
“It also deals with sorting out the governance failures that we are seeing, making sure that in those environments, governance is attended to, internal audits and audit committees operate properly, the councils themselves contend with their duties as given in the governance frame work, and the relevant disciplinary boards and MPACs (municipal public accounts committee) in those councils are operating at the right level and that councils attend to financial management, budget and performance management matters and deal with consequences when there are problems.”
Maluleke said she believes building these public institutions is about shifting them from a culture of lack of competence, lack of delivery, lack of accountability and lack of transparency to a culture where there is better institutional integrity, competence, delivery, transparency and accountability.
Maluleke also decried the state of financial management at municipal level saying there continues to be poor planning in terms of how financial resources are allocated.
“It starts with unfunded budgets, where you have 44% of municipalities tabling and approving budgets that are unfunded in that the revenues they are aiming to collect are largely unrecoverable and that is known at the beginning of the process when they are approving those unfunded budgets.”
Our assessment is that there is a lack of skills and capacity to deal with financial management in municipalities. Even though many people are appointed and remunerated in different finance functions, we see a gap around instability and competence
— Tsakani Maluleke
Besides the unfunded budgets, there is poor record keeping, lack of daily and monthly controls, lack of end of the year reporting, lack of review and monitoring of compliance and they end up with basic controls which are not effective and the ability to manage whatever available resources is constrained.
“Our assessment is that there is a lack of skills and capacity to deal with financial management in municipalities. Even though many people are appointed and remunerated in different finance functions, we see a gap around instability and competence,” said Maluleke.
Other than skills and capacity as a root cause of the inability to report on financial management properly, there is the element of governance and accountability. “We are not seeing the type of impact that internal audit and audit committees ought to be providing. Even though every single municipality has got an internal audit function and an audit committee we are not seeing the impact of their work.”
Meanwhile in the latest municipal audits, only 38 of the country’s 257 municipalities received clean audits. This is down from 41 in the previous financial year.
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