The City of Cape Town lost its three-year clean-audit streak after receiving an unqualified audit opinion in the latest Auditor-General report.
This shift is significant because Cape Town was the only metropolitan municipality to have received a clean audit outcome for the prior three financial years [1]. The loss of this status suggests a decline in the city's financial governance standards compared to previous cycles.
Auditor-General Tsakani Maluleke said the outcome was due to problems in procurement, contract management, and supply-chain processes. Some reports describe the cause as a "minor technical issue" [2], while other statements from the Auditor-General's office said the city "regressed" on supply-chain management, which led to non-compliance concerns [3].
Despite the loss of the clean audit, the city remains one of the few high-performing metros in the country. Only two metropolitan municipalities, Cape Town and eThekwini, secured an unqualified audit opinion in the 2024/25 cycle [4].
The city has reacted with varying degrees of acceptance. Some reports indicate that the City of Cape Town is disputing the finding after losing its clean-audit status, while the Auditor-General's office said there were concerns regarding the city's financial health [3, 5].
An unqualified opinion means that the financial statements are fairly presented, but it lacks the "clean" designation because of the specific compliance failures in procurement and supply-chain management identified by Maluleke [2, 3].
“Cape Town was the only metropolitan municipality to have received a clean audit outcome for the prior three financial years.”
The transition from a clean audit to an unqualified opinion indicates that while the city's books are generally accurate, its adherence to legal procurement frameworks has faltered. In the context of South African municipal governance, where systemic corruption often plagues supply-chain management, Cape Town's regression may signal a vulnerability to the same administrative failures affecting other metros.
