The auditor-general has delayed the results of Western Cape
Health Department until January 2021 apparently because of Covid-19. I’d like
to say it was because of my intervention, though.
In June I wrote
to AG Kimi Makwetu that the WCHD’s
“clean audit” outcome for 2018/19 was not deserved mainly because their
performance objectives could not be independently verified. WCHD’s annual
report noted not all its performance objectives could be measured but gave
themselves a pass anyway which the AG accepted at face value.
The AG’s criteria for
a clean audit are financially unqualified and no material deviations in
performance objectives and laws.
Every year the DA and DA-run administrations make a huge
thing about the number of clean audits they receive. They equate it with good
governance. The Western Cape: the country’s “cleanest
government”, “Another
year of clean audits confirms commitment to good governance” (2020) and “Clean
audits confirm commitment to good governance” (2019).
But showing a bipolar
attitude to audits, the DA’s leaders and followers,
who generally lack accounting expertise, believe their entities’ (the auditees’)
accounting policy and financial legislation, which they confuse with audit
compliance and “auditor-general’s
standards”, is a hindrance to service delivery.
Former premier Helen Zille infamously said (international)
auditing
standards must be dropped because it was inconvenient to them and service
delivery (“unintended consequences of clean audits”), and provincial staff were “not
prepared to risk
the auditor-general’s wrath [sic]” not complying with national supply chain
processes (her anecdote illustrated “red tape”, i.e. accounting policies, were inconvenient to
service delivery).
Last year on the release of the AG’s findings for 2018/19 the incumbent Alan Winde wrote (ibid), “service delivery must take precedence
over compliance [sic]” and “the onerous audit process and ever-shifting
goalposts are standing in the way [sic]”.
This is DA
misinformation. An accountant would disagree the process is onerous.
Instead it’s required and justified. As I said, these are the uninformed opinions
of lay people who despite years in public administration still don’t understand
the process and never will.
Despite these reservations about the audit process they
don’t believe in (they litigate when they don’t get the result they want),
again this year Western Cape finance MEC David Maynier brags about the results:
“Another
year of clean audits in WCape” – 17 out of 22 provincial departments and
entities.
Agriculture is qualified (an ongoing court case) and
health’s results are delayed until January 2021.
Maynier’s statement concludes “The Western Cape Provincial
Parliament received an ‘unqualified opinion with no findings’, or ‘clean audit’,
for the 2019/20 financial year. These audit outcomes are the result of a
concerted effort by all officials to ensure that good governance and good financial management remain at the heart
of what we do in the Western Cape Government (emphasis added).”
It reveals the confusion and ignorance about
auditing and clean audits I wrote to Makwetu about and asked he clarify.
First, only people ignorant of auditing and accounting –
it’s inexcusable for Maynier and any politician, especially accounting officers
– would not know all audits have findings;
it’s only the material ones that are relevant. The “findings” he must mean are
the non-financial aspects of the audit – performance objectives and laws. (Of
course, the financial side also have findings that for the WC’s financially
unqualified cases were immaterial.)
Second, and I can’t stress this enough, the annual audit
(despite the audit including performance objectives and laws, in his reply to
me in September, Makwetu insisted it’s a financial audit only) of government
departments is not a review of “good governance”. Good financial
management is an important part but not the totality of governance.
The fact is the WC and majority of all state departments in
the country don’t meet the requirements of good governance. This includes financial
management, service delivery, ethics, just administrative action and full
compliance with all laws and regulations. The WCHD in particular, but it’s
unlikely to be the only one, is “failing the people it serves” (Treatment
Action Campaign, 2018, and annual South African Health Review).
The DA is dismissive and aggressive toward the role and
function of the auditor-general. One would expect the ANC, which has the most
to lose by qualified audits the AG issues for departments under its control,
would have the most to complain about. After all, the ANC disbanded the other
corruption-fighting unit, the Directorate of Special Operations aka Scorpions because it was too
successful.
Instead the ANC gave the AG greater powers with the Public Audit Amendment
Act of 2018 which “aims to
foster [financially] clean government in the public sector”.
Curiously, the DA, which resisted the Scorpions’
elimination, believes the AG is a hindrance to service delivery and preventing
corruption when arguably it's the only state institution remaining that's preventing the country’s
slide now the NPA and police are ineffectual and compromised. Proving the
DA’s schizophrenic attitude to the AG, Alf Lees, DA Member of the Standing
Committee on Public Accounts, wrote
about the Act “it is paramount the AG shows some teeth and hold delinquent
and irresponsible municipalities to account”.
We will never know the real reason for the delay of WCHD’s
audit results. It’s unlikely the pandemic has anything to do with it because if
that were true, other departments’ results too would have been delayed. But I
trust the AG is using the extra time to review the problems with the
department’s performance objectives I brought to his attention.
However, unfortunately he hasn’t clarified for the WC and
other state departments and the politicians what clean audits mean because
Maynier and WC government still claim it’s synonymous with good governance.
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