By Des Erasmus
There was a rare kind of honesty in provincial presentations to the portfolio committee on public service and administration about lifestyle audits last week.
Not moral candour, God forbid. Hell would be spitting ice cubes should anything to do with government reach that level of self-awareness.
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No, it was bureaucratic candour, the kind that slips out when a system is forced to explain itself and ends up revealing that it has built something far weaker than advertised.
The most honest province, surprisingly, was Gauteng, something I would not usually write without a whisky within reaching distance.
It said employees who were asked to submit years of bank, credit, loan and trust account records “will always be reluctant” to hand over information that may incriminate them.
Well, yes. A lifestyle audit that depends on the enthusiastic cooperation of a potentially compromised individual is not an audit. It is a negotiation.
Even more deflating was the committee hearing that because the SIU is brought in through secondment agreements rather than proclamation, it is “unable to exercise its powers” under its Act.
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In other words, the taxpayer-funded corruption-busting unit is sent to battle with all the muscle of a 70-year-old car guard trying to foil a cash-in-transit heist.
In its presentation, Gauteng said (the temptation to write alleged here is very strong) that it wants the SIU given more power, so that the process depends less on what officials choose to disclose.
Quite right, too. One should not put the suspected looter in charge of the headcount and then call it accountability.
To its credit, Gauteng also understood that resistance is political before anything else.
That’s why it subjected the premier and MECs to vetting and lifestyle audits first, to “avoid resistance” lower down the ranks and secure the blessing of labour.
KwaZulu-Natal’s presentation was devastating precisely because it was so restrained.
The province said it had had 100% compliance since initiating lifestyle audits in 2021/2022. Every department submitted. Every box, one assumes, was dutifully ticked. And yet no department reported any referral for further investigation or criminal action arising from red flags.
This admission, however, should have closed the meeting because of sheer embarrassment: “the absence of red flags is not fully indicative of compliance”.
The province said its present system was mostly confined to e-Natis, the deeds registry and CIPC. In other words, cars, property, company ownership.
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Useful? Certainly. Sufficient? No.
Why? Because graft is not restrained to titled houses and registered SUVs.
It is layered through proxies, benefits, undeclared financial flows, favours, and the genius of living like a rock star in somebody else’s name.
KZN was therefore right to ask for more “verification mechanisms” and “data-sharing arrangements”. The surprise is not that it asked, but that this was not built in from the start.
Then there is the North West.
It said 335 senior managers disclosed their financial interests. Ethics officers verified them, but the result was “no red flags”.
Department after department, the same pattern appeared. Zero red flags. Zero internal inquiries. Zero lifestyle investigations. Zero lifestyle audits.
This is possible only in the way that a municipality claims everything is fine because the complaints line has been dead for months.
One must be fair, however.
The North West is not saying corruption does not exist. It laid out the appropriate theory of lifestyle reviews, investigations and audits in its presentation.
It described how discrepancies should trigger escalation.
But that is precisely what makes the outcome so bleak. The machinery exists on paper but the alarm never sounds.
When a province reports perfect calm in a country not celebrated for immaculate public ethics, scepticism is not cynicism, it is simply eyesight.
In the Western Cape, according to its presentation, lifestyle reviews are triggered by tip-offs, whistleblowers, complaints, non-disclosure, undeclared wealth and risk-based targeting in procurement environments.
If “unexplained wealth” is identified, the head of department refers the matter to provincial forensic services. If there is reasonable suspicion of economic crime, SAPS is drawn in and disciplinary steps follow. This is what accountability looks like when verbs are attached.
It also matters that the Western Cape says its premier and cabinet, together with spouses or life partners, submit themselves to lifestyle audits by an independent forensic services provider.
That is not virtue, however. It is architecture. It says the system is supposed to apply upwards as well as downwards. And it embeds lifestyle audits in a cycle of controls, oversight, reporting and the much vaunted “consequence management”.
The Western Cape appears to understand a truth the others are still circling: an audit is not an event. It is part of a chain. Break the chain and the audit becomes a ceremonial document with a stern title.
South Africa is yet to build a lifestyle audit regime that assumes dishonesty. Instead, it has constructed one that still crosses its fingers and hopes to be assisted by the dishonest.
