2 March 2026
To download Mr Zibi’s soundbite, click on this link: https://iono.fm/e/1651402
The tabling of the National Budget by the Finance Minister is an important political and economic milestone. It provides South Africans and key stakeholders with a better understanding of the national priorities set out by the President in the State of the Nation Address.
While there appears to be an expectation that the Finance Minister can ensure fiscal responsibility across hundreds of government authorities, this expectation is not grounded in how a functioning political system should work. This expectation is unreasonable.
Neither the Finance Minister nor the officials of the Treasury are omnipresent, watching administrative and policy decisions like a hawk to ensure that public funds are used efficiently. There’s simply not enough of them to do that.
Our constitutional scheme places a responsibility on every public institution and all public officials to ensure that South Africans always get the best value for their taxes. Parliament has an important role in this scheme through the oversight role played by its committees, working together with the Auditor-General and other agencies.
Too much of the funds allocated by the Finance Minister for social and economic development are lost to ill-considered policy and administrative decisions, poor financial management and corruption. When this happens, it is not possible to fulfil what the President and Minister of Finance say in their respective policy statements at the beginning of the year.
There are three areas that I believe Parliament should cast a sharp eye over. These are:
- Infrastructure spending – which is across all three spheres of government, including state-owned companies.
- Municipal financial management.
- Cost-saving initiatives across the government.
Infrastructure Spending
The Finance Minister said that over the medium-term, infrastructure spending will remain above R1 trillion, which will be composed of:
- R577 bn expenditure by state-owned companies.
- R217 bn by provinces
- R205 bn by municipalities
There is also a special appropriation of R5.8 bn for PRASA’s rolling stock fleet renewal programme. These are significant sums of money and, given how prevalent mismanagement and criminality are, it is important that Parliament and provincial and municipal public accounts committees work very closely with the Auditor-General to safeguard them.
The Standing Committee on Public Accounts (SCOPA) will, as part of the strategy we adopted last year, be focusing on key institutions across the programme. These include national departments, state-owned companies and some metros and municipalities. In this, we are working very closely with the Auditor-General, and we have an MoU with the Special Investigating Unit.
I am happy to provide more insight during question time.
Municipal Financial Management
While both the President and the Finance Minister announced that structural reforms through Operation Vulindlela are beginning to bear fruit, I remain extremely worried about the obstructive role municipal dysfunction is playing in our economic recovery efforts. Not only do Municipal Public Accounts Committees (MPACs) appear weak and ineffectual, but there also seems to be a culture of impunity regarding key infrastructure projects.
In the coming weeks, we will be engaging with municipalities in the Eastern Cape, including Buffalo City Metro and OR Tambo District Municipality, which are critical to the province’s economic and social infrastructure. Having received briefings from the Auditor General and the SIU on both, the picture remains deeply concerning, as observed during the joint oversight visits of the PC on Cogta and SCOPA last year. So, we will closely examine the amount and quality of spending on infrastructure maintenance and renewal. We cannot grow the economy and create jobs if small family-owned businesses and start-ups have to contend with water disruptions and impassable roads, among other challenges.
Let me now move to something which one of my colleagues has spoken about, which is the programme the government has to incentivise better governance at the local level. One of the key requirements for delivering services is that municipalities must establish special agencies to provide these services, such as water, transport, or energy. This is fine in theory. Yet when one looks at previous audit outcomes for say metros or entities such as the Joburg Theatre, they have horrendous audit outcomes, including the City of Johannesburg. So, formulating the agency on its own does not solve the problem.
The performance of the municipality and the quality of management remain central.
Again, I am happy to expand on municipalities during question time.
General Cost Savings
Finally, let me speak about two areas of improvement that need to work together: project and contract management. Projects end up costing more because of poor project management on the ground and poor contract management.
It is not uncommon for contractors to be allowed to miss critical deadlines and, in some cases, eventually be evicted after being paid, but there is no subsequent attempt to recover the funds. That puts the Treasury in an impossible position of having to allocate additional funds to the same projects, sometimes to suffer a recurrence. There are examples, particularly in parts of the Eastern Cape, where water infrastructure projects have absorbed substantial funding over many years with limited tangible benefit to communities. Contractors have been terminated without completing the work, yet recovery of funds has not followed, forcing further allocations simply to finish what should already have been delivered.
The Minister of Finance cannot be expected to remedy these operational failures single-handedly. The Finance Minister is not Superman or Superwoman. If municipalities and departments are not performing, we face a systemic problem. Economic growth and access to critical services depend on capable and accountable local government.
Much of this is caused by the employment of unsuitable people to critical management and executive positions. I am not happy that the government is just hunting for ghost workers, which is very important. What we also need is a skills review and audit, and to be prepared to re-deploy or eject people who are either non-performing or under-qualified for the work that they do.
Conclusion
The issue is not only how much money has been stolen, although that is critically important. It is also how much money is lost through inefficiency, poor project management, weak contract oversight and the absence of consequence management. Even where there is no direct corruption, wastage and incompetence impose a heavy burden on the economy.
If we fail to address these systemic weaknesses, we will continue to divert resources to correcting avoidable failures instead of driving economic growth and service delivery. That is not sustainable.
While my colleagues next to me will be busy processing the various phases of this budget over the next three months, the SCOPA has the advantage of beginning its work in earnest now already. Between now and Easter, we will have a combination of SOCs, government departments and municipalities on some of the topics I spoke about earlier. We are also working frantically to produce the RAF report, which will also reveal significant, needless financial leakages due to mismanagement and poor oversight.
Thank you, Chair.
Arrange a tour