Cape Town – The GOOD Party has put the spotlight on clean audits achieved by the City of Cape Town after it emerged that the police were probing a staggering R1,6 billion corruption scandal .
Earlier this week, on Tuesday evening and Wednesday morning, police raided 26 properties across as part of a high-profile fraud investigation linked to dodgy contracts issued by the City of Cape Town municipality.
Police searched municipal offices, private businesses, homes of City of Cape Town officials, and premises of service providers with tenders.
Commenting on the police raids, GOOD Secretary-General & Member of the Western Cape Parliament Brett Herron said: “When SAPS [SA Police Service] arrives with warrants linked to tender fraud on the scale of R1.6 billion, we are compelled to ask: how did the City manage to have all these so-called ‘clean audits’?”
Herron further asked: “What lies beneath the glossy reports, if billions of rands of public money are under investigation?
“In this term of office, since 2021, the City of Cape Town has had more raids by the Hawks and Commercial Crimes Unit of SAPS than during all the previous terms combined.
“We have contracts with gangsters, a former Mayco [Mayoral Committee] member charged with fraud and corruption, raiding of two current Mayco members’ offices, and now the raids conducted yesterday.
Herron said, in the last two or three years, the City of Cape Town has had the R1.8 billion housing corruption scandal, the R386 million waste management corruption scandal, and now the R1.6 billion urban mobility corruption scandal.
“The fact that the City of Cape Town can receive clean audits while their procurement processes are so porous and the administration is so riddled with allegations of corruption – currently amounting to nearly R4 billion – must raise questions about both the claim of a clean audit, but more importantly, what does it actually tell any member of the public about the state of governance,’’ stated Herron.
He added: “Clearly, something is either misrepresented about the auditing process or the clean audit does not equal clean governance.”
Herron said it was the Democratic Alliance (DA) that had politicised clean audits by claiming they “represent something that those of us who have served in executive office know they are not”.
He said while SCOPA can interrogate ministers, DGs, HODs, and CEOs of state-owned entities, in full public and media view, the DA-led City of Cape Town closes the workings of the Municipal Public Accounts Committee to the public.
Herron suggested this arrangement enabled the City of Cape Town to hide corruption, irregular, fruitless, and wasteful expenditure from scrutiny.
However, Cape Town Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis said: “I’m concerned there’s been some irresponsible reporting on this: The fact is that the City of Cape Town’s City Manager, Lungelo Mbandazayo, asked the SAPS to investigate this matter, following the City’s own internal investigation.
“So we support the SAPS action, and in fact, our own investigations spurred them to act.
“Our residents can know that we will always root out any wrongdoing and have a zero tolerance for corruption.”
