Pay back the money.
Imagine a world in which municipal officials could be held personally liable for negligently or intentionally wasting taxpayers’ money.
Consider how the lack of service delivery and the collapse of infrastructure in municipalities could be reversed if there was a rule, regulation or law that required a municipality to recover those funds from responsible officials.
Well ,that world exists right here in South Africa and it applies to every single one of the country’s 257 metropolitan, district and local municipalities.
The Dispatch was taken to task by the BCM’s municipal public accounts committee chair Sakhumzi Caga for singling out the body (MPAC) for doing too little to hold to account those responsible for the disastrous “revamp” of Water World Fun Park, among other projects which have proved heinously expensive while delivering nothing.
Those responsible for this wasteful expenditure must be held to account
But the truth of the matter is visiting these disastrous sites and gasping at their dilapidation is not enough.
Those responsible for this wasteful expenditure must be held to account. Fortunately there is now no doubt whatsoever that not only can they be held to account through disciplinary proceedings, but that they can also be personally liable.
The Supreme Court of Appeal ruled decisively last week that the Municipal Finance Management Act (MFMA) means exactly what it says. Municipal officials, past and present, can be held liable to pay back the money if they are found to be responsible for unauthorised, irregular, fruitless and wasteful expenditure.
In BCM’s case, its fruitless, wasteful and irregular expenditure stood at almost R11-billion for the 2022/23 financial year.
If even half of that could be recovered from responsible officials, BCM would be back in the pound seats.
The judgment is thankfully unequivocal. There can now be no skating around it.
The court ruled that: “Liability arises as soon as an official intentionally or negligently incurs unauthorised, irregular and fruitless and wasteful expenditure.”
But for reasons hard to fathom, the MFMA must be the most underutilised act in the entire body of South African law. The auditor-general annually mourns the lack of accountability and consequence for wrongdoers.
The only municipality in the Eastern Cape to date that has sought to implement its extensive powers to recover funds from past and present responsible officials is the Nelson Mandela Bay Metro.
It is time that the other metro, BCM, showed its mettle and did the same.
MPAC needs to do more than just visit BCM’s failures. It must make sure that those responsible for sucking dry our public resources are made to pay back the money.
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