The Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) demands urgent action by national and provincial government to stem the rot in local government. The latest Auditor-General (AG)'s report on the state of local government is alarming and depressing and highlights a worrying picture in the decline of the financial health of increasing numbers of municipalities.
The AG's Consolidated Audit Outcomes for Local Government for 2022-23 report that only 34 out of our 257 municipalities were able to achieve a clean audit with few signs of improvements. This comes against reports over the past decade showing the number of financially distressed municipalities increasing from 10% to over 70%. Over the past few years, COSATU and our relentless Affiliate, SAMWU, have had to intervene with COGTA, SALGA, Parliament and directly in nearly three dozen municipalities in six provinces who have routinely failed to pay workers' salaries and third-party benefits.
We do welcome some progress with 18 municipalities moving out of disclaimed audit opinions as well as R924 million in financial losses recovered.
The AG's report highlights some of the worst culprits and repeat offenders who have incurred disclaimed audit opinions over multiple years; including Maquassi Hill (6 years) and Ratlou (5 years) in the North West, !Kheis (6 years) and Joe Morolong (8 years) in the Northern Cape, Masilonyana (8 years) and Nketoana (5 years) in the Free State, as well as Makana (5 years) and Sunday River Valley (5 years) in the Eastern Cape.
These same municipalities are amongst the same under whose watch municipal services have deteriorated at an alarming rate and where municipal workers have been expected to report for work whilst being unpaid for months at a time.
Government has been talking about intervening to turn the deeply worrying state of local government for many years now, including deploying competent management, removing those implicated in corruption, unrolling capacitation programmes in 140 struggling municipalities and moving towards a District Development Model. It is more urgent than ever that these are expedited and happen.
