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Good and bad of audit reports

  By Valencia Talane Depending on which way you look at it, the municipal audit report for the 2012/13 financial year offers either a positive or a miserable outlook for South Africa's local government landscape. The report was published last week by the auditor-general, Kimi Makwetu. As Pravin Gordhan, the minister in charge of local Read more >

Gordhan questions the rules

Valencia Talane The one-size-fits-all approach to the governance standards of local government does not work and needs a rethink, according to Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs Minister Pravin Gordhan. Gordhan, who was responding to the latest auditor-general report on municipalities on 30 July, said that the standard requirements for metro municipalities, for example, could not Read more >

What’s the real cost of corruption – part one

By Lorraine Louw It’s easy to point to the losers when it comes to government corruption – that would be the residents and citizens. It is much more difficult to quantify the actual cash lost, with various government departments and entities, as well as political parties and NGOs, turning out their own figures. In October Read more >

Problems in North West

Municipalities in North West were hailed by the province’s leadership towards the end of 2012 for meeting auditor-general (AG) Terence Nombembe’s deadline for submitting their financial statements for that year – but what was not revealed at the time was that the achievement came with a R29-million bill for taxpayers. On Wednesday, Mail & Guardian Read more >

More calls for Manase report release

The Manase report into dodgy dealings by officials and politicians in eThekwini reared its ugly head again this week, threatening to add a few more bumps to President Jacob Zuma’s road to Mangaung. A summarised version of the report was released in February. It found that there had been more than a billion rand in Read more >

What makes a tender dodgy?

By Chantelle Benjamin A recent probe by Corruption Watch into a R13.6-million Department of Transport communication tender, which revealed several serious irregularities, highlights problems faced by government in trying to police billions of rands’ worth of tenders annually. The Corruption Watch report, which was given to the public protector on Thursday 23 June, revealed a Read more >