‘We will not go soft on municipalities’
Midvaal and the West Rand District Municipality are the only two Gauteng municipalities that obtained clean audits for the 2024/2025 financial year.
Finance MEC, Nkululeko Dunga, released the provincial municipal audit outcomes at the Makause informal settlement in Ekurhuleni and insisted that his department will not go soft on municipalities that.
This marks the second consecutive financial year where only two of the province’s 11 municipalities managed to achieve a clean audit. Dunga warned that deteriorating financial management is directly driving poor service delivery, crumbling infrastructure, and rising irregular expenditure.
Six municipalities received unqualified audit opinions with findings from the Auditor-General. These include Mogale City Local Municipality, Rand West City Local Municipality, Sedibeng District Municipality and Lesedi Local Municipality.
Dunga highlighted that Mogale City opened the financial year with a zero balance on unauthorised, irregular, fruitless, and wasteful expenditure. However, he maintained that previous financial misconduct will still be thoroughly investigated and penalised.
“A zero opening balance does not erase what was stolen or misspent in the years before it, and we will continue to insist that money lost to irregularities and unauthorised expenditure in Mogale City's past is accounted for and, where possible, fully recovered.
Gauteng continues to face widespread protests from residents demanding that local government address escalating service delivery failures. Communities routinely complain about severe unemployment, inadequate sanitation, and inaccessible roads that block emergency vehicles.
Water quality remains another critical issue, with Makause residents reporting that contaminated water is making local children sick. Dunga emphasised that poor audit outcomes translate directly into these harsh daily realities for informal settlements.
“The residents of Makause have told us, in their own words, that their children drink water that makes them sick.
“What the Auditor-General calls a qualified audit opinion, what the Auditor-General calls material irregularities, what the Auditor-General calls growing concerns and uncertainty, is not an abstraction; it is Makause informal settlement,” Dunga said.
The City of Tshwane heavily contributed to the provincial financial crisis by accumulating massive unauthorised and irregular expenditure over four years. Specifically, the metro accumulated R12.17-billion in irregular expenditure, R5.22-billion in unauthorised expenditure, and R3.61-billion in fruitless and wasteful expenditure.
City of Johannesburg and the City of Ekurhuleni, both regressed from unqualified to qualified audit opinions. Johannesburg alone accumulated R6.55-billion in irregular expenditure and R6.81-billion in unauthorised expenditure during the period.
Our two largest metros, the City of Johannesburg and the City of Ekurhuleni, both regressed this year, moving from unqualified to qualified audit opinions. We will not soften this,” stressed Dunga.
Comments