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The Department of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs (COGTA), which sponsors Operation Clean Audit, just got a “qualified” audit. If there were any indication that this department is really suffering from a lack of leadership, this is it. The very department entrusted with improving the many failing municipalities across the country cannot even keep its own house in order. The Auditor-General’s (AG’s)qualified audit opinion, revealed in the department’s recently released annual report, shows that COGTA requires a change of leadership – and fast.

To make matters worse, COGTA racked up R420 million in irregular expenditure in the last financial year due to improper financial procedures. According to the AG:

“... the department did not have an adequate system for identifying and recognising all irregular expenditure and there were no satisfactory alternative procedures that I could perform to obtain reasonable assurance that all irregular expenditure had been properly recorded.”

This means the department might have misspent even more than R420 million.

Also, the department failed to spend R117 million of its budget, a portion of which was supposed to support life-line jobs in the Community Works Programme. This could have supported hundreds, if not thousands, of temporary jobs at a time of great financial crisis for many South Africans.

COGTA requires an actively engaged leader who can make the department an instrument of clean, efficient governance. Unfortunately, Minister Shiceka has failed to live up to the requirements of the job. It’s time that the Presidents hires someone who will clean up the department and fix local government.