A quarterly risk management report for the Nelson Mandela Bay municipality has painted a grim picture of the city’s finances, showing overall spending was sitting at just 37% as of April 30.
Councillors described the spending as criminal.
They said the city was struggling to deliver services to the people and was also plagued by natural disasters.
The city had spent only R799.1m of its capital budget against an adjusted budget of R2.13bn.
According to the report, the city’s collection rate was sitting at 68% against a target of 80%.
The 2025/2026 quarterly risk management report was presented at a municipal public accounts committee meeting on Tuesday.
According to the report, the root causes stem from:
- Leadership instability and vacancies;
- Weak contract and supply chain management;
- Inadequate planning and forecasting;
- Capacity constraints;
- Poor accountability and consequence management.
“The quarter three risk profile highlights critical risks threatening the financial sustainability, governance integrity and service delivery performance,” the report read.
“While governance structures are in place, execution gaps, leadership instability and systematic control weaknesses continue to undermine performance.”
The report also revealed the metro has a 73% vacancy rate.
It noted that operational risk exposure had increased from 130 to 133 risks, indicating growing control weaknesses, and that a high level of irregular expenditure persisted despite write-off interventions and Mpac oversight processes.
The city’s unauthorised, irregular, fruitless and wasteful expenditure is still the highest in SA, close to R30bn. The amount is historical.
ANC councillor Xolani Notshe said the report offered an aerial view of the city.
“We see this helicopter view of what’s expected, but we must register a strong view,” Notshe said.
“We have four opportunities on a quarterly report to assist the municipality in showing red flags on what needs to be done, but we’ve been denied that opportunity.
“The auditor-general will tell us things that should have been seen by us, but we are denied that opportunity.”
Notshe questioned if planning was happening across departments.
“It’s sad and criminal that we’ve registered only 37% capital spending as of April 30.
“This report shows us a very poor performance by this institution.
“We need to register that with a poor performance collection rate; all the risks are just looking downwards.”
DA councillor Gert Engelbrecht said there was no breakdown given of expenditure by the different directorates.
“We spent 37% of our budget with basically two months left, but you can’t read anything into this, except that everybody’s underperforming and underperforming dismally.”
Mpac chair Luxolo Namette described the report as incompetent, saying it should be taken back, reworked and presented to the committee again with more detail.
DA councillor Werner Senekal questioned who authored the report, labelling it “pathetic”.
ACDP councillor Lance Grootboom said just as the city was digressing, so was Mpac.
“The way it looks outside, it looks the same here,” Grootboom said.
“So the question that I want to ask is, is this a quarterly? Where are all the items that we resolved in our oversight?
“Where are they? They should have been here with timelines. We gave the time that we implement.
“They should have come to us now. So, colleagues, this is a circus.”
Acting chief operating officer William Obeng said the report came from the risk management unit and was prepared to give councillors a summarised version of the one tabled before the risk management committee.
“From our perspective, we know what is wrong, we know why we are not spending like we should, but keep on trying to find solutions to those issues,” Obeng said.
“If you read the report, it points impact to specific issues that the other fields will be of interest.
“This report is not a comprehensive report for all the quarterly items. I think we must understand that.
“The idea is to give a synopsis of the key highlights in terms of the strategic risk that we’ve been discussing at the committee level, and if the committee sees that we probably need to add more flesh to how we present, we will do that.
“Individual directors have a responsibility of submitting their own report in line with the action or the items that are contained in the oversight report, which has specific guidelines as well.”
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