Auditor-General Tsakani Maluleke has called for municipal and departmental heads to account for poor audit outcomes in what she called a ’culture change’.
AUDITOR-General Tsakani Maluleke has called for municipal and departmental heads to account for poor audit outcomes in what she called a “culture change”.
She was speaking to journalists at the Limpopo leg of her cross-country media engagement visits, which she embarked on last week.
The visits are part of her office’s plan to work closely with the media during audits and outcomes.
Maluleke has been the auditor-general for about a year, after replacing Kimi Makwetu who died of cancer in 2020. She had been his deputy.
“I’d like for our teams to work with appointed officials to influence what we call a culture change, to effect the organisational changes necessary to make public institutions efficient, accountable and transparent.
“Those who are appointed to run public institutions must be responsible. We want them to introduce and maintain a culture where they are proactively doing the right thing without having to wait for pressure to be put on them by auditors when they come once a year,” Maluleke said.
However, she did acknowledge that implementing this “culture shift” was not going to be easy to achieve.
“We are determined to succeed. We will use the skills that we have and the insight we are able to derive from our work.
“These powers have enhanced our ability to hold auditees accountable for their failure to address the findings and recommendations we report on during an audit.”
She said her office was now obliged by law to encourage corrective action where there had been accountability failures.
“We don’t put people in jail – our job is to make sure that when we audit we get the accounting officer to do that which he or she is already required to do by law.
“Ultimately they could end up with a certificate of debt if there is continuous failure.
“What we anticipate is that the moment we come across an irregularity, an accounting officer should act by doing what the law requires anyway. For example, hold people accountable, including disciplining their staff members, referring the matter to law enforcement agencies and even cancelling contracts found to have been irregular.”
Maluleke said the A-G’s office had powers to act where accounting officers continued to fail.
On how often she and her team were offered bribes she said it was not pervasive, but it was a matter of concern.
“There is no one in the office that issues an audit report by themselves. So even if you bribed me, I don’t issue an audit opinion.
“All the audit opinion reports are the outcome of a team. Some people do get desperate to push for a better audit outcome than they deserve, and they try to bribe one of our officials … and we have reported on that where it has happened.
“It does worry us because it says you have a few people who co-operate, and those who want to take short cuts.
“But thankfully we have auditors who work as a team and focus on accounting to their professional bodies, which has set out a code of conduct,” Maluleke said.
