The community of Cape Town's Gate 7 informal settlement protests over the lack of service delivery. Concepts such as ‘accountability’ and ‘consequence management’ are critical in improving the audit outcome of a municipality, says the writer.
Prof. Bheki Mngomezulu
On June 24, 2026, South Africa’s Auditor-General, Tsakani Maluleke, tabled her consolidated report presenting the 2024-2025 audit outcomes as part of her constitutional obligation.
One of the main observations made by the AG was that the sixth administration, whose term of office ended in May 2024, did not achieve the desired turnaround in local government. This was a serious indictment of government’s failure to act on delinquent officials.
What was glaring in the audit report was that only 39 municipalities obtained a clean audit opinion. This translated to 15% of all the 257 municipalities nationally. The figure was less than the 41 municipalities that obtained a clean audit in the previous annual report.
