Cape Town's Clean Audit: Unqualified Opinion with Red Flags

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The Auditor-General has revoked Cape Town's clean audit status. This is not a surprise, as a separate police investigation concerns City contracts worth about R1.6 billion. Search-and-seizure operations took place at 26 addresses linked to officials, businesses, and service providers. This means large contracts do not walk through City Hall alone, with officials drafting, committees evaluating, managers approving, departments certifying, and finance paying.

The Western Cape High Court has declared the City's property-value-based fixed charges for cleaning, water, and sewerage UNCONSTITUTIONAL, unlawful, and invalid. These charges were calculated through property values, leaving residents confused.

Cape Town's operating expenditure is R74.7 billion, with R22.1 billion for employees, R18.9 billion for bulk electricity, and R11.4 billion for contracted services. The City targets only around 2,200 top structures, 3,200 serviced sites, and 2,400 informal-settlement sites serviced.

Let us be precise. This does not mean the financial statements collapsed. It means R1.6 billion could NOT be accounted for properly, raising questions about power moving through specifications, bid committees, extensions, invoices, consultants, and contractors.

Cape Town's 2026/27 budget is a whopping R87.8 billion. That is not a footnote. That is power moving through specifications, bid committees, extensions, invoices, consultants, and contractors. And this questions must be answered.

Who writes the tender? Who qualifies? Who is excluded? Who wins again? Who approves variations? Who checks delivery? How much work reaches businesses in Khayelitsha, Mitchells Plain, Atlantis, Delft, Gugulethu, Nyanga, and Philippi? How many permanent jobs are created where unemployment is deepest?

Cape Town's clean audit is gone, and with it the Democratic Alliance's strongest political defence, argues Faiez Jacobs. He says the latest audit findings should trigger greater scrutiny of procurement, public spending, and governance in South Africa's best-known DA-run city.

The budget shows whose urgency counts. Water and Sanitation receives R5.387 billion in capital, Urban Mobility R3.039 billion, and Energy R1.506 billion. Human Settlements receives about R967 million.

But a dry home is infrastructure. A serviced site is infrastructure. Stormwater drainage, fire-resistant settlements, safe pathways, clinics, libraries, and community halls are infrastructure too.

Yet the City targets only around 2,200 top structures, 3,200 serviced sites, and 2,400 informal-settlement sites serviced. Mayor, you had 10 years to improve social housing – don't make promises now.

This is not the defeat of the housing crisis. It is the administration of waiting. The poor cannot sleep in a pipeline. They cannot shelter under an artist’s impression. Their children cannot be warmed by a future-year allocation.

Our pain is deliberately separated. Ratepayers are told their problem is valuation. Backyarders are made invisible. Informal-settlement residents are blamed for unsafe land. Young people are told unemployment belongs to national government. Gang-ravaged communities are told policing belongs elsewhere. Small businesses are offered another workshop.

So what must we understand, build, and become to change Cape Town? We must understand that a better city will not arrive at City Hall. It comes from understanding the value of every R in every budget – and making sure our politicians do the same.