The Auditor General’s most recent review of local government provided an unsurprising set of poor findings. The findings highlight the challenges facing the government in terms of efficient, effective management. It really all boils down to a lack of skills and leadership in the public sector. Looking to help the government on its path to achieving a clean audit is Nonkululeko Gobodo, Chairperson of SizweNtsalubaGobodo, she chats to Alec about the reality of the situation facing government audits and how it can achieve better management and appropriation of funds. – LF
ALEC HOGG: Joining us for more on the findings of the Auditor-General’s local Government Audit Report is Nonkululeko Gobodo, Chairperson of SizweNtsalubaGobodo (the name in the title), so we have the right person in the studio. You want to help. I think many businesses in South Africa want to help. Local Government is struggling. He talks a good game I think, does Simphiwe, but on the other hand, there’s much work to be done if only nine percent of the audits are clean. How can SNG help?
NONKULULEKO GOBODO: Thanks Alec. We have been servicing the public sector for a long time, but I suppose, as an accounting firm, you have two feet: one servicing the public sector and the other one servicing the private sector, which we should and will continue to do. However, we realise that we cannot just look at the situation facing our country and do nothing about it, so we’ve decided to reorganise our firm and really establish a serious public sector consulting outfit, which is really going to focus on solving the problems within the public sector. The biggest part of the problem, really, is capacity and skills – as we know. The second thing is they have all the sophisticated… I must say that Government has done a lot in terms of professionalising the public sector and in terms of accounting systems – they’ve defined all those things – but we don’t have people on the ground to those things.  The biggest part of it is leadership. Alec, it’s all about leadership.
ALEC HOGG: If you look at Johannesburg for instance, they have a wonderful computer system, but it doesn’t seem like there’s enough people who can operate it efficiently. Is that a similar thing when you go around to other local Governments?
NONKULULEKO GOBODO: Yes and the issue is that there are few of them going around, so we find that a municipality may be able to source a CFO and the CFO would stabilise things because they’re afraid of them. Then he or she is stolen by another municipality and everything falls flat, so I really believe that Government needs to have a long-term view in terms of skills. They need to have a pipeline of skills at various levels, as we do at accounting firms. Since we need professionals to sustain ourselves, we always make sure there’s a pipeline of skills coming into the firm – being trained at various levels – so that we can remain in business. Government needs to do that and identify their service skills, for example. Within their service skills, what they need to say is ‘okay, we have to service the entire country in terms of their needs, but let’s allocate a portion of that budget to service the public sector itself.
ALEC HOGG: Is that not happening?
NONKULULEKO GOBODO: I don’t believe it’s a focused project, if it is happening. You’d therefore always have this pipeline of skills being trained at various levels, because without that you are not going to solve this problem.
ALEC HOGG: Nonkululeko, the other issue that would concern many people is that you do have incumbents in municipalities who are abusing their situation, who are using it to their own ends. Surely, they’ll be resisting any input whatsoever, from a private sector organisation. How do you overcome that?
NONKULULEKO GOBODO: I must say, again, it’s all about the political will. The ANC itself has acknowledged the fact that these deploys do not have the qualifications, so I suppose we need to solve that. We need to deploy people who have the qualifications. If they aren’t fully equipped, then we need to empower them and up-skill them quickly.
ALEC HOGG: But you can’t just create an accountant. You know it takes many years to do that.
NONKULULEKO GOBODO: No, you can’t create an accountant. I’m saying it may not be a full experience, but let’s at least have a program to up-skill them quickly.
ALEC HOGG: But let’s hope they have a BCom if the tell you they have a BCom. We know…the Sunday Times telling one of our doctors he doesn’t even have a degree now. It just seems as though there are so many issues that we need to… We have an ideal. We know where we want to go to, but in the short term surely, there could be greater public/private participation.
NONKULULEKO GOBODO: I really believe so. The Government is really contributing to the economy. So many of us who render services to the public sector, I think we need new leadership where the private sector also contributes to capacitating Government and up-skilling Government.
ALEC HOGG: So would you do that at cost or would you expect to make a decent profit out of helping in that way?
NONKULULEKO GOBODO: Because I’m an entrepreneur, I wouldn’t say you’d do that at cost, but I think there should be upfront agreement in terms of what form it’s going to take. For instance, we as a firm have said we have this public sector consulting unit where we’ve identified the problems within the public sector, and it’s really, all about governance and compliance. It’s all about financial institutions being fully established. It’s all about capacity and skills and it’s all about anti-corruption. We’ve organised ourselves to answer that question.
ALEC HOGG: And maybe to help Government to put things in place, so that it can wean itself off you. Often, when a consultant comes in they want to be there forever. We need to look at it differently.
NONKULULEKO GOBODO: Exactly. That’s why we’re looking at all those things, because if you don’t deal with corruption…remember, that’s one of the things we need to weed out of Government, because it affects everything else. It affects who is deployed. It affects who renders services within the public sector. One of the things that they need to do is to accredit consultants. Remember, you can have a situation where anybody can render services. For instance, what the Auditor-General does is they accredit consultants. You have to meet their standards. They test you every year. If you don’t meet their standards, they take you out of that list. I think this is what we need to do. We need to accredit consultants, because we’re all painted with the same brush.
ALEC HOGG: Thank you for coming through to the studio today for that good, common sense discussion. Nonkululeko Gobodo is the Chairperson of SizweNtsalubaGobodo
