Dirty laundry of clean audits

It takes the pulse of the state's finances, no matter how fluttering it might be: it's the auditor-general's annual report to parliament, an event looked forward to only by political masochists.

- William Saunderson-Meyer

When one ploughs through the original AG reports of the past five years - the period the latest report uses for comparative purposes - one realises that it's all about keeping a game face, whatever the setbacks. There are always "encouraging signs", "significant effort" and "steps in the right direction".

However, these nuggets of hope are too often stalled or reversed a year later. As AG Tsakani Maluleke notes this year, there is the ever-present "culture of zero consequences".

The supposedly good news is that 90% of departments had clean audits, as did 77% of public entities. But the clean departmental audits are 50% higher only when compared to 2018-19, the last year of the Jacob Zuma administration. When compared to last year, there actually has been a drop from 146 clean audits to 142.