The best peforming municipality in KwaZulu-Natal

The uMhlathuze Local Municipality has achieved a clean audit for five consecutive years, making it the best-performing local government in the province.

This is according to the Auditor General of South Africa’s (AGSA) 2023/24 assessment of the financial records of the country’s 257 municipalities.

The municipality is situated in the King Cetshwayo District Municipality, which also achieved a clean audit during the financial year.

Local municipalities are responsible for delivering direct services to communities, while district municipalities tend to handle cross-municipal functions such as infrastructure provision.

Over 412,000 people reside in uMhlathuze LM, which comprises roughly 125,000 households.

Of these, 93% have access to piped water, 99% have electricity for lighting, and 63% have access to flush toilets.

Major towns include Richards Bay, which serves as the municipality’s main industrial port, Empangeni, an agricultural hub, and eSikhawini.

As for the municipality’s council, it is controlled by a coalition of the IFP, DA, ACDP, NFP, and VF+.

The IFP and ANC hold the most seats in the council, with 25 each, followed by the DA with eight, the EFF with six, and the ACDP, VF+, and NFP with one seat each.

The IFP occupies the position of mayor through Xolani Ngwezi, with the DA’s Christo Botha as deputy mayor.

According to the AGSA, the municipality has had no unauthorised or fruitless and wasteful expenditure since 2018/19.

On the other hand, it had an irregular expenditure closing balance of R4.8 million by the end of the 2022/23 financial year.

Based on past audits, it has been found that the municipality takes an average of 43 days to pay its creditors and 115 days to collect its debt.

It was also found that more than 10% of the following year’s budget had been spent in previous years.

However, receiving a clean audit for four or more consecutive years made it one of only 25 municipalities in the country to achieve this.

This is a significant achievement when compared to the audit opinions of other municipalities nationwide.

Newsday reached out to the uMhlathuze Local Municipality for comment on its performance but did not receive a response by the time of publication.

Types of audit outcomes

There are five types of audit outcomes given by the AGSA. The best result is a clean one, which means that no misstatements were found in an entity’s financial reporting.

This is followed by a financially unqualified outcome, which contains no material misstatements; however, issues have been raised regarding an entity’s reporting. Ninety-nine municipalities received this type of audit outcome.

If a municipality receives a qualified audit outcome, it means the AG has determined that its financial reporting contains material misstatements in specific amounts. This was found to be true for 90 municipalities.

An adverse audit outcome means material misstatements have been found that are not confined to specific amounts, as was the case for six municipalities.

The final outcome is a disclaimer of audit opinion, meaning that the entity provided insufficient documentation to make an audit decision. Eleven municipalities received disclaimed audit opinions.

King Cetshwayo District Municipality

The King Cetshwayo District Municipality was the only other government in KwaZulu-Natal to achieve a clean audit for four or more consecutive years.

It comprises the Mfolozi, Mthonjaneni, Nkandla, uMhlathuze, and Umlalazi local municipalities.

Of these, uMhlathuze and Umlalazi received clean audits, while the rest received unqualified opinions with findings.

The population of the entire district was estimated to be 982,726 in 2019. uMhlathuze is the largest local municipality by population, accounting for nearly 40% of the people living in the district.

Of the council’s 18 seats, the IFP holds 9, followed by the ANC at 7, and the DA and EFF with one each. The IFP occupies both the mayoral and deputy mayoral positions.