SA’s vanished R1.377-trillion — the cost of compliance without delivery

According to recent Auditor-General of South Africa report, SA’s collective five-year accumulated figure for unauthorised, irregular, fruitless and wasteful expenditure across national, provincial and local spheres has reached an astounding R1.377-trillion, with R31.84-billion to R35-billion classified strictly as fruitless and wasteful expenditure. 

We have perfected the art of the audit checklist, yet our taps run dry and our infrastructure crumbles. 

As we mark the 70th anniversary of the historic 1956 Women’s March, the true measure of governance must shift. Seven decades ago, 20,000 courageous women marched to the Union Buildings shouting “Wathint’ Abafazi, Wathint’ Imbokodo” (You strike a woman,  you strike a rock). They didn’t just march against unjust laws – they marched for human dignity, equal rights and a better life for future generations. 

Yet today, that very future is being strangled by institutional inefficiency and systemic budget leaks across the government as a whole. 

When public funds meant to empower women and uplift communities evaporate, we aren’t just failing an audit – we are failing the legacy of Lillian Ngoyi, Helen Joseph, Rahima Moosa and Sophia Williams-De Bruyn. The most severe financial haemorrhaging occurs in two critical phases across all spheres of government: 

The front-end failure 

Arbitrary demand management

Money disappears at inception through poor planning or deliberate manipulation: 

• Inflated Specifications: Tailoring requirements to favour specific suppliers. 

• Unnecessary Procurement: Buying goods or services the state does not need. 

• Price Gouging: Procuring basic items at exponential mark-ups over retail value.

• State Information Technology Agency – Recent disclosures laid bare a staggering R12.1-billion wasted on failed government IT and digital infrastructure projects due to flawed planning from the outset. 

The back-end failure

Broken contract management 

Value evaporates after the tender is won through a lack of oversight: 

• Expanding contracts post-award without proper budget approvals. 

• Paying for substandard infrastructure or incomplete work. 

• Extending timelines indefinitely without penalising non-performance. 

Infrastructure failures like the Park Road police station renovation ballooned from R31-million to R63-million over nine years, and it is still 76% incomplete. 

Meanwhile, local governments wrote off or condoned R62-billion in irregular expenditure over five years without proper investigation. 

Identifying compliance failures is no longer enough. For SA to progress, accounting officers and leadership must realise that true governance isn’t a clean audit on paper. 

True governance is the delivery of clean water, safe roads and working clinics. It is achieving the substantive equality and economic empowerment that the women of 1956 stood for. We must stop tracking rules and start translating audit insights into tangible public value. 

Seventy years later, how do we shift the public sector from “tick-box compliance” to delivering the future our icons fought for? DM