Deal harshly with mismanagement
It depresses me to read through the auditor-general’s findings.
Some of the latest findings affecting our municipalities, including that only R70.9-billion or just 19% of municipal budgets totaling R378-billion, “was spent by municipalities with clean audits”, should serve as the last shocker to push for bold actions to erase “fruitless and wasteful” (spending) from our books.
Municipalities are the most immediate public gates to our democratic government, and it could be tantamount to betraying our constitutional democracy if steps are not taken urgently to change how local governance works.
Something bold must be done to correct the recurring widespread financial mismanagement evidently prevalent in many public institutions. Stringent policies are required to curb this scourge.
We must pin our hopes that the governing party’s national policy conference will spare neither strength nor courage in finding new policy approaches to correct whatever is causing such unacceptable financial mismanagement, as it is evident from the auditor-general’s findings, and thereby emulating the drafters of the Freedom Charter who pledged “to strive together sparing neither strength nor courage, until the democratic changes are won”.
All the aspirations entailed in the Freedom Charter will never be realised if there is no good governance.
There is a dire need for the ANC-led government to be seen to be dealing decisively with corruption across both private and public sectors.
At the end of the policy conference we hope to hear and read about renewed determinations through strengthening policy to pronounce new bold approaches to make our local government system work more efficiently and effectively in delivering basic developmental services as promised by the Freedom Charter. Bennitto Motitswe
Tshwane