OPINIONS & PERSPECTIVES: Has The Eastern Cape Become Too Accustomed To Municipal Failure?

There is a danger in becoming accustomed to failure. What should ordinarily provoke difficult questions eventually becomes another statistic in a report, another item on an agenda, another promise made at a public meeting and, eventually, another matter forgotten until the next financial year.

Perhaps this is one of the greatest risks facing local government in the Eastern Cape: that poor municipal performance becomes so familiar that we stop asking what it means for the people whose lives depend on these institutions.

Consider the numbers.

Of the Eastern Cape’s 39 municipalities, only eight achieved clean audits for the 2024/25 financial year. That is 20.5% of municipalities in the province. The remaining 31, or 79.5%, did not achieve a clean audit.

The Auditor-General of South Africa’s municipal audit outcomes, released in June 2026, provide a more detailed picture. Eight municipalities received clean audits, 12 received unqualified audit opinions with findings, 17 received qualified audit opinions with findings, and two received disclaimed audit opinions. No municipality received an adverse audit opinion.

These distinctions matter. An unqualified audit opinion with findings means the financial statements are fairly presented but certain compliance or performance-reporting problems remain.

A qualified opinion indicates material problems with particular aspects of the financial statements, while a disclaimer means the auditor could not obtain sufficient appropriate evidence to express an opinion.

A municipality that does not achieve a clean audit is not necessarily corrupt, nor does a clean audit automatically translate into excellent service delivery. Audit outcomes must be understood for what they measure: the credibility of financial reporting, compliance with applicable legislation and the quality of reported performance information.

But it would be equally misguided to treat these figures as an accounting matter with little relevance to the lives of ordinary people.

The question is not simply why only eight municipalities achieved clean audits. It is what these results tell us about the institutions entrusted with managing public resources, planning local development and delivering essential services.

That is where the conversation becomes important.

When governance meets everyday life

A municipal budget is more than a financial document. It represents decisions about priorities, resources and the future of a community.

Behind every allocation is an expectation that something will happen: a road will be maintained, a sanitation problem will be addressed, waste will be collected, infrastructure will be repaired or a development project will move closer to completion.

The relationship between municipal finances and service delivery is not always straightforward. Some service-delivery responsibilities are shared between municipalities and provincial or national government. Infrastructure backlogs, revenue constraints, ageing assets and shortages of specialised skills also complicate the picture.

Nevertheless, financial accountability is one of the foundations upon which effective service delivery depends.

When procurement controls are weak, projects can be delayed or exposed to irregular expenditure. When financial records are unreliable, municipal leadership may struggle to make informed decisions. When performance reporting is inadequate, residents and oversight institutions may find it difficult to establish whether public money has achieved its intended purpose.

The consequences can be felt in communities long before they appear in an audit report.

For a resident of a small Eastern Cape town, a governance failure is not necessarily experienced as a qualified audit opinion. It may be experienced as a road that remains in disrepair, a public facility that is not maintained or a municipal complaint that goes unresolved.

For a small business, it may mean operating in an environment where infrastructure challenges increase costs and uncertainty.

For a community hoping to attract investment, it may mean that development opportunities remain unrealised because the institutions expected to facilitate local growth cannot consistently demonstrate effective planning and implementation.

These examples do not establish that the 31 municipalities without clean audits have all failed in these respects. They illustrate why the systems measured by the audit process matter beyond the accounting office.

The province cannot seriously discuss local economic development without discussing the quality of local government.

The cost of weak accountability

One of the more difficult questions raised by persistent audit findings is whether municipalities are learning from their mistakes.

An audit is valuable not merely because it identifies a weakness, but because it creates an opportunity to correct it. Where the same findings recur, the issue becomes bigger than the original error. It raises questions about whether corrective measures are being implemented, whether management is exercising sufficient oversight and whether those responsible are being held accountable.

This is where political leadership and municipal administration intersect.

Councillors have an oversight responsibility. Municipal managers and their administrations are responsible for ensuring that municipal systems function properly and that public resources are managed in accordance with the law. Political office-bearers must provide leadership without compromising administrative accountability.

These responsibilities should not be confused, but neither should they be used to shift blame indefinitely between political leadership and administration.

A municipality cannot improve if every failure becomes an argument about who is responsible rather than an opportunity to establish what went wrong and how it will be corrected.

Equally, accountability should not become a political instrument used selectively against opponents while allies are protected. Findings must be investigated fairly, evidence must guide decisions, and appropriate consequences must follow where misconduct is established.

The objective is not to punish for the sake of punishment. It is to restore the integrity of public institutions and prevent public money from being lost, mismanaged or spent without delivering the intended benefit.

What would change the picture?

The Eastern Cape does not need another declaration that municipalities must improve their audit outcomes. It needs a demonstrable shift in how municipal performance is managed.

The first step is to treat audit findings as matters requiring resolution rather than observations to be acknowledged in annual reports.

Every municipality should have a clear corrective-action plan identifying outstanding findings, the officials responsible for addressing them, deadlines and evidence of completion. Municipal councils should monitor progress, while provincial and national oversight institutions should provide targeted support and intervention where necessary.

But improvement must extend beyond closing audit findings.

Municipalities should be able to show residents how budgets translate into completed projects and functioning services. Spending should be assessed alongside delivery. A municipality that spends its allocated infrastructure budget has not necessarily succeeded if the project is incomplete, defective or unable to serve its intended purpose.

Procurement and contract management also require particular attention. Proper planning, transparent processes, effective contract monitoring and verification of work before payment are essential safeguards for public resources.

Where there is evidence of wrongdoing, investigations must be pursued and appropriate action taken. Where problems arise from inadequate capacity, municipalities must strengthen their systems through recruitment, training and professional support.

These interventions require consistency. A once-off campaign to improve audit outcomes will not resolve structural weaknesses that have accumulated over several years.

The province should also make municipal performance easier for residents to understand. Budgets, annual reports, infrastructure commitments and progress updates should be accessible and presented in language that communities can follow.

Public participation must mean more than inviting residents to meetings. It should give them the information necessary to question decisions, track commitments and establish whether their concerns have been addressed.

A community cannot meaningfully hold a municipality accountable if it cannot determine what was promised, what was budgeted and what was delivered.

The elections and the question of trust

The timing of these audit outcomes is significant.

With the Local Government Elections scheduled for 4 November, twenty-six days from now, municipal performance will inevitably form part of the public conversation. Political parties and candidates will present their records, explain their priorities and make commitments about the future.

Residents should listen, but they should also interrogate.

What has happened to the promises made during the previous term? Have recurring audit findings been addressed? Have infrastructure projects been completed? Are municipal finances being managed more effectively? What evidence exists that service delivery has improved?

These questions should be directed at all political parties seeking public office, not only those currently governing.

The responsibility for municipal performance cannot be reduced to party slogans. It requires an examination of the actual decisions made by political leaders, the performance of municipal administrations and the effectiveness of oversight.

It also requires voters to distinguish between promises that municipalities can reasonably fulfil and responsibilities that fall to provincial or national government. In a province where service-delivery responsibilities often intersect, accountability must be informed by a clear understanding of which institution is responsible for what.

Elections offer an opportunity for residents to assess the people entrusted with governing their municipalities. They also provide an opportunity to demand a different standard of public leadership.

But changing political leadership does not automatically correct defective procurement systems, fill critical professional vacancies or restore sound financial controls.

The work of building capable municipalities must continue after the election results have been announced.

The incoming councils will inherit institutions with existing strengths, weaknesses, obligations and backlogs. Their responsibility will be to address these realities rather than use them as a permanent explanation for poor performance.

The same standard should apply to every administration, regardless of which political party leads it.

Beyond the clean audit

The eight municipalities that achieved clean audits deserve recognition. Their experiences may offer useful lessons about the systems, leadership practices and administrative discipline required to sustain sound financial management.

The other 31 municipalities must confront their findings with equal seriousness.

Yet the ultimate ambition should be larger than improving the provincial clean audit count.

A clean audit is an important governance milestone, but it is not the final measure of a municipality’s worth to its residents. The purpose of accountable financial management is to protect public resources and support the delivery of services, development and opportunities.

The Eastern Cape needs municipalities that can account for public money and demonstrate what that money has achieved. It needs administrations capable of planning beyond the next financial year, maintaining existing infrastructure and creating conditions in which local businesses and communities can thrive.

Most importantly, it needs a public culture in which accountability is expected rather than celebrated as an exception.

The approaching elections provide an opportunity to place this expectation before political parties, candidates and voters. The challenge is to ensure that it remains a priority long after the campaign posters have been removed.

Thirty-nine municipalities serve communities with different needs and circumstances. They should not be judged as though their challenges are identical. But all are expected to manage public resources responsibly and account for their performance.

Eight clean audits out of 39 should therefore be more than a headline about municipal finances. It should prompt a broader conversation about the kind of local government the Eastern Cape needs to realise its development potential.

The residents of this province should not have to choose between municipalities that can account for public money and municipalities that can deliver services. They have a legitimate expectation that local government must strive to do both.

The real measure of change will not be how many times municipal leaders promise better governance, or even how many clean audits are recorded in the next report. It will be whether residents can see, in the functioning of their municipalities and the conditions of their communities, that accountability has begun to make a tangible difference.

Sources: Auditor-General South Africa, 2024/25 Municipal Audit Outcomes; South African Government and the Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs, 2026 Local Government Elections announcements.