Members of the Gauteng legislature have criticised premier Panyaza Lesufi’s leadership, saying clean audits do not reflect the progress that still needs to be made in the province. This came during a debate over the legislature’s recently adopted premier’s office oversight report, which revealed that it incurred R590,000 in fruitless expenditure and R455.6m in irregular expenditure, despite maintaining a clean audit for the 2024/25 financial year. The central question and concern raised by the committee…is the misalignment between spending and outcomes.
ActionSA member Richard Ngobeni said the wins by the premier’s office, like continuous clean audits and 98.38% of invoices paid, cannot be dismissed; however, clean audits don’t equal effective governance. “So, we can see that this is not just a technical issue; it’s a value-for-money failure. In a province facing deep service delivery backlogs like ours, a high unemployment rate, and growing public frustration, full expenditure without commensurate impact is unacceptable.” Ngobeni added that ActionSA expects Lesufi to account for compliance and also for results.
“On preferential procurement, while the office exceeded targets for youth, women, and black-owned businesses, they continue to underperform on people with disabilities at just about 1.8% against their target of 7%. “This is not unique to the office of the premier, but that is precisely why leadership is required from the centre of government. Commitments alone are no longer sufficient,” he said. Moses Koma of the EFF said the report was another state of the province address, not a document of objectives, achievements, and progress in governance and service delivery “The office of the premier has shown to the people of Gauteng that organising G20 summits to impress and excite international visitors is more important than the actual state of things in the province.
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