The City of Cape Town is routinely presented as proof that good governance is possible in South Africa. It has received clean audit opinions. Its infrastructure generally functions. Its financial management is considered the benchmark. But the clean audit masks a more complex reality.
According to the Auditor-General's MFMA report for 2022/23, the City accumulated more than R4 billion in irregular, fruitless and wasteful expenditure across multiple departments. The housing directorate accounted for R1.8 billion, urban mobility for R1.6 billion, and waste management for R386 million. These are not trivial amounts — they exceed the total budgets of many smaller municipalities.
A clean audit opinion does not mean zero irregular expenditure. It means the irregularities did not cross the materiality threshold that would trigger a qualification. The City's budget is so large (over R60 billion) that even R4 billion in irregularities can remain "below the radar" in percentage terms. This is critical context for the national debate: when one political party points to Cape Town's clean audits as evidence of superior governance, and another points to ANC municipalities' qualified audits, the underlying data reveals that procurement irregularities exist across the political spectrum. The scale differs. The accountability differs. But the pattern of irregular expenditure is not confined to any one party.