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Legalbrief   |   your legal news hub Sunday 14 December 2025

Still a long wait for clean municipal audits - researchers

University of the Western Cape (UWC) researchers say ratepayers will have to wait until 2023 for municipalities to get clean audits as most failed to meet the 31 May deadline for unqualified audits, according to a City Press report.

It notes that at the start of President Jacob Zuma's first term in 2009, the government promised clean municipal and provincial government audits by the end of May 2014 in what was called the Operation Clean Audit 2014 campaign. The most recent Auditor-General's report on municipal audits, released late last year, showed that only 48% of the country's 278 municipalities achieved unqualified audits. UWC's research, titled 'Operation Clean Audit 2014: Why it failed and what can be learned', said there was no practical plan or proper coordination among those involved in the promise to deliver the clean audits. The report also pointed out that municipal managers faced no sanction for not meeting the target - and this meant there was no way of ­enforcing compliance. Full City Press report