Shock attack on Auditor General

ANC to investigate local Councillors’ conduct

Umlalazi Municipality’s ANC Councillors attempted on Tuesday to pass a resolution in conflict with the nation’s supreme audit institution, the Auditor General (AG), who approved the uMlalazi Council’s annual report for the 2008/2009 financial year. This followed after an unprecedented attack on the Auditor General’s representatives present at the meeting. The Council had met to consider the annual and auditor’s reports, which included a letter dated 30 November from the AG that the municipality’s financial statements were fully ‘in line with National Treasury accounting practices and that policies and practices operated effectively throughout the year.’ Despite this, ANC Councillors EZ Jaffe and M Mbuyazi, branded the annual report misleading and ‘not compiled in terms of National Treasury Regulations and approved guidelines’, directly challenging the professional opinion of the AG. They went a step further and proposed that the annual report be rejected and made the subject of an independent forensic report. District Mayor Stan Larkan, who attended the meeting as an uMlalazi Councillor, said that ‘the attack on the Auditor General’s office is condemned with the contempt it deserves.

Performance
‘An excellent report was presented by a member of staff of the AG’s office, which was extremely satisfied with uMlalazi’s performance during the past year.’ Larkan intends recommending disciplinary or legal action against the ANC Councillors who disrupted the meeting. Despite repeated calls by Speaker MS Shandu that attacks on the AG were unconstitutional and that they were ignoring standing rules, the ANC Councillors continued to disrupt the meeting. They walked out under the shocked gaze of the AG’s staff present, after calling the duty performance of the Municipal Manager Chris Gerber and Mayor MET Magwaza ‘questionable’. Both Mayor Magwaza and CEO Gerber said they preferred to heed the AG’s professional opinion about their administration above that of the disruptive Councillors. A spokesperson for the office of the AG in Pretoria said that the AG ‘has a constitutional mandate as the supreme audit institution of the country to strengthen our democracy by enabling oversight, accountability and good governance in the public sector through auditing, thereby building public confidence’. ‘As such the AG is absolutely independent and subject only to the constitution and the law which require his office to be totally impartial.‘The AG even holds the executive government and all public entities accountable for their use of public resources and how they deliver public services. A spokesperson at the ANC headquarters, Luthuli House, said, ‘It is most definitely not ANC policy to attack the office of the Auditor General.’ He promised a speedy investigation into ‘this serious breach of protocol’ in the party’s KZN structures.‘It is declared ANC policy that all local authorities should strive to achieve unqualified annual performance reports from the AG,’ said the spokesperson for the ANC.

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