South Africa: City Manager Insists Joburg Is Financially Sound During Grilling in Parliament

Facing threats from Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana to withhold funding, Johannesburg's city manager, Dr Floyd Brink, told Parliament that rising revenue collections had stabilised the city's finances. But its municipal entities have written off at least R45bn in fruitless and wasteful expenditure.

Johannesburg's city manager, Floyd Brink, says that the city's budget tabled for 2026/2027 is funded. This was in direct response to Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana's threats earlier this week to withhold funds from the City of Johannesburg if issues relating to its unfunded adjustment budget were not settled by the end of this month.

Brink, along with the City's executive mayor, Dada Morero, group chief financial officer, Tebogo Moraka, and acting head of group forensics and investigation services, Sinaye Nxumalo, addressed Parliament's Standing Committee on Public Accounts (Scopa) on Tuesday, 9 June.

The group were grilled by parliamentary representatives following the Auditor-General's report on 2 June that gave the City an unqualified audit with findings on its consolidated financial statements and found that poor management, weak accountability mechanisms and deteriorating infrastructure had led to high levels of fruitless and wasteful expenditure.

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In addition, the Auditor-General flagged that the unfunded 2024/2025 budget had led to an unauthorised expenditure of R2.38-billion in the financial year, as expenditure had been planned to be funded based on unrealistic revenue targets.

The R97.1-billion budget the city adopted in late May drew the ire of ActionSA and the DA, who voted against it,...