ANC caucus must allow the AG to work, protect the public purse

GEORGE Devenish drew the attention of Argus readers yesterday to the Public Audit Amendment Act becoming operational as of April 1 this year.

For the past 20 years, the Auditor-General (AG) has been bemoaning the lack of consequences for those who were incurring irregular and fruitless expenditure.

The Public Finance Management Act (PFMA) was observed in government departments and stateowned enterprises (SOEs) more in its circumvention than its application. Devenish points out that an “astronomical sum of R55.6 billion” was wasted within both national and provincial entities” as at the end of March last year.

I don’t agree with Professor Devenish that the guardian of the public purse is the AG. That role rightly belongs to the National Assembly (NA).

Unfortunately, between 2009 and 2018, the ANC caucus in the NA abandoned its function of guarding the public purse. It allowed (then) president Zuma to reign over state capture without any impediment.

The AG’s function is to see to it that the PFMA was being adhered to and that expenditure approved by the NA, irresponsible as that was, occurred within the prescripts of the law.

Professor Devenish is right in stating that it is “of singular importance in our system of constitutional democracy” that public money is spent in accordance with parliamentary or other appropriation by people who are obliged to account accurately and comprehensively for expenditure.

Apart from fruitless expenditure, there is the other area of concern to all of us as taxpayers.

Our money is often spent irregularly. According to Professor Devenish, “stand-alone irregular expenditure of R51bn” occurred within government departments and an amount of R28.4bn was accumulated by SOEs not audited by AG Kimi Makwetu.

This laxness of control by the NA and the limitations imposed on the AG allowed state capture to proceed uninterrupted. It also affected service delivery and “contributed to serious political protests, many of which were unfortunately violent.

As of April 1, the AG and his staff were given increased powers to bring to book those who are “careless or deceitful” in using taxpayers’ money wastefully and corruptly.

If the ANC caucus does its work in keeping with the provisions of the Constitution, the AG will be greatly assisting in dealing with officials who flout the PFMA.

We in Cope have long been calling for the empowerment of the AG. We now wait to see how taxpayers’ money is going to be used going forward.

FAROUK CASSIM | Cope