Nkwinti lays bare the broke, broken mess at water affairs
● Water and Sanitation Minister Gugile Nkwinti inherited a bankrupt and dysfunctional department from Nomvula Mokonyane.
Nkwinti told the Sunday Times in an interview in his Cape Town offices this week that his new department was swimming in debt — and that there were no proper structures in place to monitor the performance of officials.
Nkwinti was moved from the Department of Rural Development and Land Reform, where he served for about nine years, when President Cyril Ramaphosa reshuffled his cabinet in February. While laying bare the mess at his department this week, Nkwinti did not point a finger at Mokonyane and avoided mentioning her by name.
Nkwinti said the department’s budget for 2018-19 was R15.5-billion, but R11.4-billion of that will be allocated to accruals and other debt — and, effectively, they have a budget of about R4.1-billion to work with.
“What can you do with that? Nothing!”
Criminal charges
The department has a long history of instability and financial mismanagement. It is facing a full inquiry by three parliamentary committees, with the possibility that criminal charges may be laid by the parliamentary public accounts watchdog, Scopa, for a R2.9billion overdraft that the department took with the Reserve Bank.
The committee accused Mokonyane of leaving a department that had “completely collapsed”, saying it was worrying that she was now minister of communications — at a time when the SABC was trying to recover from dire mismanagement of its own.
Nkwinti will be meeting Finance Minister Nhlanhla Nene to discuss a way forward with regard to the department’s finances.
The department underspent by about R460-million on one of its programmes, while it had a huge overdraft on the other hand. Nkwinti will be asking to retain those funds instead of the money going back to the National Treasury.
“Let me give you an example. We have budgeted R104-million for Giyani [water project]. I imagined that is going to complete the bulk infrastructure, but that again creates tension because it then emerges that there are accruals dating back about two years or so of about R73-million, which means in reality you are left with about R31- million with regards to Giyani,” he said.
“It turns out that this is the story for the whole budget.”
The minister has tasked acting directorgeneral Sifiso Mkhize with compiling a report as to what led to this state of affairs.
“You have to find a way of understanding how this thing happened. I am expecting him to give me a report on the monitoring and evaluation of the department itself because as an accounting officer, the DG ought to have that mechanism of monitoring and evaluating the work in terms of projects.”
Nkwinti also wants to probe the role played by the department’s internal audit committee in trying to avert the situation.
“You mean over the last two or so years, they didn’t say anything? So I want a report to see what did they say about the state of finances and even the organisation so that we can all take responsibility for failing to perform our own responsibilities.
“If there is no report, that would be a big statement itself, that no there are no reports . . . I am not very optimistic that all of those reports might come through — maybe the portfolio committee and the [auditor-general] would definitely have reports, as powerful oversight institutions of the state, but internally that’s where I expect there could be challenges with getting reports,” he said.
Nkwinti described the administration of his new department as “fuzzy”. He discovered that the department’s structure and functions were not clear.
“Structure is very important in organisations because it provides some form of hierarchy and hierarchy is important because it gives you a handle and without that structure, functional responsibilities are very fuzzy and that is what is happening here.”