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A Political Analyst is linking municipal wasteful spending to poor consequence management.
Political analyst, Dr Levy Ndou, has attributed fruitless and wasteful expenditure in local government to a lack of consequence management. National Treasury’s Municipal Financial Management Act Compliance Report, covering the July 2024 to June 2025 financial year, has revealed that irregular expenditure had reached R268.1 billion.
Key findings show that municipalities tend to write off the losses rather than enforce accountability and ensure they get the money back.
Dr Ndou says the state of the municipalities in South Africa is worrying.
PANEL DISCUSSION | South Africa’s municipalities are facing rising irregular, fruitless and wasteful expenditure. Wayne McComans from National Treasury and Sandile Swana unpack the findings, governance challenges and implications for service delivery. pic.twitter.com/iME0Wr4vRJ
— SABC News (@SABCNews) May 17, 2026
“The most unfortunate part is that this is not a new challenge or something new to us. And the unfortunate part appears to be that we don’t seem to be having very strong consequence management in a number of municipalities. Our own government should also be able to develop a new guideline which should talk to the kind of personnel that we need in the municipality, so that things are able to change,” says Dr Ndou.
VIDEO | Discussion | Irregular, fruitless and wasteful expenditure at municipalities climbs to R268 billion
