YCLSA calls on government to act on Auditor-General Report

26 July 2012

The Young Communist League of South Africa [Ufasimba] notes the audit report by the Auditor-General Advocate Nombembe on the state of municipalities across the country.

It is demoralizing to find out that only 13 out of 343 municipalities received clean audits and the rest are facing challenges of maladministration, corruption and incompetence as central challenges hampering service delivery.

"Tenders are corrupting our public service and our politics to the detriment of our society and the confidence it has in our government." said Buti Manamela, National Secretary of the YCLSA.

"It is a sad day that more than R11bn has been regarded as wasteful and fruitless expenditure when it could have been used to build the internal capacity of the state to deliver services to our people, create more jobs and deal with poverty and inequalities” Manamela said.

We have repeatedly called for the state to build and increase its own internal capacity to deliver services to the people of South Africa; the state must further ensure that competence and merit are central to the building of internal capacity hence the investments into skills development, education and administration capacity must for part of this process.

The Auditor-General cites lack of consequences towards poor performance and transgressions as the cause of the non-improvement towards cleans audits. We are of the view that it is high time things cease to be normal and we impose harsh penalties for corruption and disservice to our people. It cannot be normal that state administrators and leadership defraud the public and we keep silent about such.

It is counterrevolutionary for anyone to stand in the way of service delivery or to be found with hands in the people`s purse and we should act decisively against such. The ANC Lekgotla that is meeting should look into this matter as a matter of urgency for correction taking reference from the school book crisis in Limpopo.

Manamela called for the Co-operative Governance and Traditional Authorities (COGTA) to institute disciplinary action and criminal charges against municipalities who are found to be corrupt.

"Although audits are a technical process to assess whether financial procedures have been followed, other government departments (such as COGTA) should follow up with service delivery audits. A clean audit does not mean quality service delivery” said Manamela.

The YCLSA calls on the government and the political leadership at all levels to act on the recommendations of the Auditor General in order to ensure that service delivery is not compromised any further.

Mangaliso Stalin Khonza
National Spokesperson
Young Communist League of SA
Cell: 083 617 5546
Tel(w): 011 339 3621
E-mail: khonzam@gmail.com