South Africa: Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (COGTA) Committee Questions Whether Performance Targets Reflect Municipal Realities

The Portfolio Committee on Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (COGTA) on Friday cautioned against interpreting performance-target achievements as proof that departmental support to struggling municipalities is working.

The committee received a briefing from the Office of the Auditor-General of South Africa (AGSA) on the Department of Cooperative Governance (DCoG), the Department of Traditional Affairs and their entities’ audit outcomes for the 2025/26 financial year.

The committee, which has been conducting joint parliamentary oversight engagements across provinces with municipalities that recorded poor audit outcomes in the 2024/2025 municipal financial year, stressed that it would test the reported performance results against persistent dysfunction and service delivery challenges in municipalities.

The AGSA reported that the portfolio achieved 89% of its planned targets.

The Chairperson of the committee, Dr Zweli Mkhize, however, said a high achievement rate could also mean targets are set too low and are not demanding enough to meaningfully address the scale of the problem. The Chairperson stressed that the committee would examine both how demanding targets were and what their achievement meant in practice. “Is your achievement aligned to the challenges on the ground?” he asked.

The committee heard that even with over 80% target achievement, the department missed important targets related to municipal support, particularly supporting priority municipalities in drawing up audit action plans and spending their Municipal Infrastructure Grant (MIG). The department set out to help ensure grantees spend at least 60% of their MIG allocations. According to the AGSA, however, monitoring focused on expenditure but not the progress and quality of projects.

Dr Mkhize said the committee would further interrogate the DCoG’s municipal support programme. He said it is important to assess whether the department has resources and the right structure to support and help struggling municipalities. He also stressed that spending must be considered alongside whether infrastructure is completed and that it serves communities. The committee will also interrogate any diversion of grant funds.

The Chairperson further noted that professionalising local government and strengthening municipal capacity would remain part of the committee’s oversight. He said the committee also wants regular reports on implementation, including the required controls to prevent the revolving-door phenomenon, where officials dismissed for misconduct in one municipality are appointed in another.

The committee will also seek more timely section 47 and 48 reports to integrate them into its joint oversight efforts. These are consolidated annual reports on local government performance in a province and nationally that the MECs for local government (s47) and the Minister of COGTA (s48) must submit in terms of the Municipal Systems Act. These reports can help identify underperforming municipalities and propose remedial action so any dysfunction can be arrested in time.

The committee undertook to closely monitor consequence management in the department following the AGSA’s report on R1.1 billion in unauthorised, irregular, fruitless and wasteful expenditure across the portfolio that had not been dealt with. The committee requested a detailed report on investigations, disciplinary steps and ongoing efforts to recover monies, including the Community Work Programme contract, which has been under investigation for the last six years.

Distributed by APO Group on behalf of Republic of South Africa: The Parliament.