As 85% of Northern Cape departments’ expenditure in the 2024/25 financial year did not meet the financial management or compliance standards set by the Auditor-General of South Africa (AGSA), the Democratic Alliance (DA) in the Northern Cape will use upcoming stakeholder engagements at the Provincial Legislature to insist on full accountability by the provincial administration.
We appreciate that six departments managed to sustain their clean audit outcomes in the 2024/25 year, and we welcome the improvement shown by the Northern Cape Department of Roads and Public Works. However, piecemeal improvements here and there cannot inspire confidence in public financial management overall when a third (33%) of provincial expenditure remains qualified and material findings were raised on a further 52%.
It is particularly painful to note the sustained stagnation in financial management and performance by the Health and Education Departments — the two entities entrusted with the bulk of provincial resources. Their continued audit failures confirm an inability to translate resources into tangible public services.
This pattern also exposes weaknesses within oversight bodies, which continue to fall short of implementing the necessary controls and behavioural changes required for audit outcomes to improve.
The DA will not be complicit in oversight failures. We will use every mechanism at our disposal to drive the financial management improvements needed for effective service delivery to the residents of the Northern Cape.