AGSA URGES ACCOUNTABILITY AS DSD LEADERS COMMIT TO STRONGER SYSTEMS

By Cuma Pantshwa.

• Robust business processes are key to keeping government departments on track, according to South Africa’s auditor-general.
• During a performance review session, the Department of Social Development heard how important it is to pay close attention to internal deficiencies, which could become major risks if unattended.
• The department’s leaders agreed that strong controls, timely evidence, and proactive management are essential for protecting service delivery and public trust.

The second day of the Department of Social Development’s performance review session placed a sharp spotlight on accountability and governance, with the Auditor-General of South Africa warning that robust business processes are key to keeping the department on track.

The Auditor-General of South Africa (AGSA), as South Africa’s supreme audit institution, has a constitutional mandate to strengthen democracy by enabling oversight, accountability, and governance in the public sector.

Its work ensures that citizens’ taxes are spent effectively, transparently, and in a way that delivers tangible benefits to communities.

Puleng Molapo, speaking for the AGSA, emphasised that all role-players must “activate the accountability ecosystem” to ensure citizens’ taxes are used effectively and transparently.

He urged the department to pay closer attention to internal control deficiencies, describing them as issues that may seem small but have the potential to grow into major risks if left unaddressed.

By doing so, he emphasised that the Department of Social Development can strengthen transparency, rebuild public confidence, and make every rand spent count for the people it serves.

“If it is not correctly crafted from the people that we get this process from, it results in a mismatch between what we audit and what we get on the business processes,” Molapo cautioned.He highlighted AGSA’s status of records review as an early warning tool that could be used from the first two quarters of the financial year to flag potential audit issues before they appear in the final report.

“Management needs to take accountability and responsibility – the processes belong to them and do not belong to us,” Molapo said. “If you don’t attend to control deficiencies early, they will result in the issues we are now seeing.”

For the department’s leadership, the session was an opportunity to translate audit recommendations into concrete actions.

Chief Financial Officer Thandeka Ngcobo said the department must strengthen its ability to validate performance targets and evidence throughout the year, not only at audit time.

“We need more sessions like this, not just for finance, but for monitoring and evaluation too, so that we understand the targets, the evidence, and the definitions. If we can verify evidence as we go, we can fix problems before year-end,” Ngcobo said.

Closing the session, the acting deputy director general, Jacques Van Zuydam, challenged colleagues to act immediately on the lessons shared.

“We can go back to our offices and start applying some of these now

“This time next year, when we prepare our submissions to the Auditor-General, we must be better prepared and not rediscover the same issues. Each quarterly review will build on the last, bringing in new topics and partners like internal audit and AGSA to help us improve,” he said.

With leaders agreeing that audit readiness is a year-round effort, the message from the session was clear: strong controls, timely evidence, and proactive management are essential for protecting service delivery and public trust.