The Great Kei municipality’s clean audit outcome is set to come under scrutiny by parliament’s finance watchdog after a whistleblower alleged the Eastern Cape municipality manipulated information submitted to the auditor-general (AG).
The municipality secured a clean audit for the 2024/2025 financial year after years of failing to achieve the milestone, but a senior municipal official has now claimed the outcome “is a sham” obtained through “fraudulent and fabricated information and documentation” allegedly provided during the audit process.
The whistleblower’s correspondence to parliament’s Standing Committee on Public Accounts (Scopa), seen by the Dispatch, alleges the municipality submitted misleading information to secure a favourable audit outcome.
While the municipality has denied wrongdoing, Scopa chair and Rise Mzansi leader Songezo Zibi confirmed on Monday that the committee had received the complaint and would investigate the matter.
Great Kei is among several Eastern Cape municipalities that obtained an unqualified audit opinion with no findings — commonly known as a clean audit — in the 2024/2025 financial year.
The municipality had maintained unqualified audit opinions for four consecutive years up to the 2023/2024 financial year.
The whistleblower, who confirmed reporting the matter to Scopa but declined to be identified publicly, alleged the municipality provided the AG with fraudulent and backdated job application forms, manipulated leave administration records and withheld information relating to penalties incurred for failing to submit returns of earnings since the 2022 financial year.
The correspondence also alleges the municipality submitted fabricated information to both the AG and the Local Government Sector Education and Training Authority regarding a purported local labour forum meeting held in April 2025 to consider a draft staff establishment for the 2025/2026 financial year.
The whistleblower further alleged unlawful recruitment processes and the concealment of wasteful expenditure linked to legal costs incurred while reviewing arbitration awards against the municipality.
Several senior municipal officials, including municipal manager Lawrence Mambila, are named in the complaint as allegedly having played a role in securing “favourable audit outcomes”.
The whistleblower also raised concerns about alleged irregular appointments and promotions.
One official was allegedly promoted despite not being qualified for the post and allegedly not having a matric, while another employee’s fixed-term political appointment was allegedly converted into a senior administrative post without a competitive recruitment process.
“During the audit period, the AG required the job application forms of all employees that were employed by the municipality during the period of the audit,” the whistleblower wrote.
“The municipality was not in possession of these required job application forms as the municipality was still requiring job applicants to use the outdated application letter method instead of standardised job application forms as determined by municipal staff regulations of 2021.
“[Certain senior officials] created new job application forms and instructed affected employees to fill and sign the newly created and backdated job application forms.”
The whistleblower alleged this was done “to misrepresent facts and mislead [the] AG to believe that the municipality was using standardised job application forms”.
The complaint further alleges information relating to employee leave administration was manipulated.
“Fraudulent information, including coercing some employees to sign letters that were drafted for the purpose of ensuring that leave administration appears accurate, was done,” the whistleblower claimed.
“Therefore, the leave administration information submitted to [the] AG was manipulated so that the municipality can obtain favourable audit outcomes.”
All these allegations are not true, in fact, they are pure lies
— Lawrence Mambila, municipal manager
Mambila denied all allegations, insisting the municipality’s clean audit was legitimate and the result of years of work.
“All these allegations are not true, in fact, they are pure lies.
“The process was done by an independent and credible Chapter 9 institution.
“We have never manipulated our information to the AG,” Mambila said.
“We have done everything by the book.
“We have always been closer to a clean audit, and when we addressed some findings, we eventually managed to achieve such.
“It is all our hard work and nothing sinister. This is all malicious.”
He said the municipality was prepared to defend its processes.
AG spokesperson Africa Boso said: “The allegations referred to in your inquiry were not brought to our attention during the audit process, and therefore did not form part of the audit scope or the audit evidence considered for this audit.
“Should new, credible information be formally submitted to the national audit office, it will be considered through the AGSA’s standing processes.”
Zibi said Scopa, together with parliament’s portfolio committee on co-operative governance and traditional affairs, would “give urgent attention to this matter” and engage the AG in the Eastern Cape.
Co-operative governance MEC Zolile Williams’ spokesperson, Pheello Oliphant, said on Monday that allegations against the municipality were “grave” and “hinge on the heart of good governance”.
“This is because withholding information, distorting information and presenting false information to the auditor-general constitutes misconduct and is a criminal offence in terms of the Public Audit Act.
“Misleading the auditor-general is a misconduct, and defeats the very purpose of auditing municipalities and municipal entities,” Oliphant said.
“Failure to provide accurate information to the AG invites a recourse such as investigation[s], disciplinary hearing[s] and even arrests, against implicated officials.”
Daily Dispatch
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