The PFMA, the police chief, and errant municipalities

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Khaya Sithole · 27 Jul 2026, 04:05  Is the PFMA being used as an instrument against suspended national police commissioner Fannie Masemola? Image: Nigel Sibanda/The Citizen A few months ago, as the country was being served a day-to-day blow-by-blow account of the endemic corruption within the law enforcement system whose reckoning was triggered by General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi’s famous press conference in July 2025, a curious episode occurred. General Fannie Masemola – the now-suspended national police commissioner – was hauled in front of the courts alongside a coterie of rogues and South African Police Service (SAPS) insiders who were all alleged to have played a role in enabling a certain Cat Matlala to score a lucrative tender with the SAPS. Read: Police chief Masemola faces criminal charges Ramaphosa suspends chief of police Masemola occupies a position whose primary characteristic is that no one who holds it ever actually completes their term. Since George Fivaz served as the first police commissioner of the democratic state from 1995 to 2000, none of the subsequent holders of the post have managed to serve without incident, crisis, and ultimately premature dismissal. Masemola’s appointment in 2022 represented the latest shuffle in a job that has become a poisoned chalice. He has managed to largely stay out of the type of scandal and drama that befell his successors. The problem that has persisted, however, is that the police service has – across all levels – serious issues of probity that have lingered long within and never got resolved. Allegations of corruption from within contributed towards a trust deficit between citizens and the police. Key incidents that loom large in the memory include the Marikana Massacre and the chaotic handling of the July 2021 riots. Read: NPA means business, but police rot runs deep Given the state of the SAPS at any point in time it would be easy to question the quality of its leadership, and someone like Masemola would expect to be continuously scrutinised. Surprisingly, however, it was in relation to the purported violation of the Public Finance Management Act (PFMA) where Masemola found himself in the crosshairs. Key part of the FMA and its municipal twin The PFMA – issued in 1999 – serves as the guiding document for public officials entrusted with the custody and management of public resources. The responsibilities of accounting officers are spelt out in Section 38, which compels accounting officers to ensure that the entity they are in charge of maintains an appropriate procurement system that subscribes to the procurement pentagram of Section 217 of the Constitution. In other words, the procurement system must be fair, equitable, transparent, competitive and cost effective. Section 38 also imposes a duty on the accounting officer to take effective steps to prevent unauthorised, irregular and fruitless and wasteful expenditure as well as losses resulting from criminal conduct. If that wasn’t burdensome enough, Section 38 also compels accounting officers who discover any unauthorised, irregular or fruitless and wasteful expenditure to immediately report – in writing – the particulars of expenditure to National Treasury or the tender board. The Municipal Finance Management Act (MFMA) articulates the same ideals in Section 62. Across both the PFMA and MFMA, delegated authorities who fail to honour the requirements of Section 38 or Section 62 are guilty of an offence relating to their failures and may be sentenced to prison terms of up to five years. Quite a legislative noose … but too loose Since such a noose exists to correct the actions of accounting officers who fail to ensure the PFMA and MFMA are honoured, you would expect that either none of the type of offences outlined in the two sections would be prevalent, or that many accounting officers would be held accountable for violations of the said sections. And therein lies the great disconnect. According to the Auditor-General, the prevalence of violations of the PFMA and MFMA are endemic across the public sector. Across the various reports that track the state of public resource custodianship, the consensus is that the MFMA and PFMA are routinely violated rather than honoured by a large majority of institutions. With that in mind, the idea of accounting officers being held accountable should be much more commonplace. Remarkably, the opposite is true. Part of the problem is the simple question of who should actually implement the corrective and remedial measures envisaged in the PFMA and MFMA. When municipal functionaries deviate from the rules, accounting officers ought to hold them accountable. When accounting officers deviate from the rules, the accounting and executive authorities need to hold them accountable. This accountability continuum should mean that instances of violations of the PFMA and the MFMA are followed up and violators held accountable or simply dismissed. Litmus test The litmus test for whether that happens would be a reduction or elimination of violations. And yet, according to National Treasury, the culture of truancy across the municipal landscape is as follows: R24 billion in fruitless and wasteful expenditure incurred since 2021; R145 billion in irregular expenditure incurred since 2021; R118 billion in unauthorised expenditure disclosed; Unfunded budgets have been adopted; and Third-party payments have not been made. These third-party payments include monies due to water boards, Eskom, pension funds, the South African Revenue Service (Sars) and the Auditor-General. What binds these third parties to the municipalities is that they are compelled to provide services even when payments have not been made on time. The problem that materialises is that these third-party entities incur costs of execution that are not matched by municipal payments. The inevitable logic would be why National Treasury does not simply instruct the municipalities to pay what is due to third parties. The answer lies in the autonomy that spheres of government enjoy. This means national departments, such as National Treasury, cannot unilaterally instruct another government structure, such as a municipality. So even if Eskom is owed and informs National Treasury that a particular municipality is truant, National Treasury cannot simply redirect funds due to the municipality and pay Eskom. Rather, the rules of intervention are influenced by the nature of the funds in play and the authorisation process for any intervention. The equitable share Simplistically, all municipal structures are entitled to a share of the national purse where the only condition is simply that they exist as a structure of government. That share of the purse – the equitable share – forms the baseline of funding and is naturally relied upon to ensure that the municipal structure is funded. If that municipality is fortunate enough to galvanise additional resources from its citizens through fees for services it offers, then it has a secondary source of revenue which gives it greater operational and fiscal latitude. That naturally depends on its ability to translate that opportunity into actual cash by providing services and then collecting the cash associated with the services. Regrettably, the true fate of the country’s 257 municipalities is that very few have the ability to galvanise this source of revenue as citizens simply do not have the ability to pay. In instances where citizens are able to pay, poor debtor management and chaotic billing undermines this – and we end up with a metro like the City of Johannesburg, struggling to accurately determine and then collect what is due to it. Under these conditions, dependency on the equitable share is high as this is the only reliable funding pipeline. Conditional grants are possible through executive action but offer a much less assured pipeline since municipalities may struggle to meet the qualifying conditions. The downside of guaranteed and assured allocations is that they are a blunt instrument for enforcing accountability simply because each municipality is entitled to its equitable share until and unless some extraordinary reasons to stop the funding materialise. In seeking to balance the scale between constitutional entitlement and responsible custody of public resources, the MFMA makes provisions for intervention in specified circumstances. Section 216 of the Constitution empowers National Treasury to firstly prescribe measures of transparency and expenditure control, and enforce compliance with such prescribed measures. Crucially, National Treasury may stop the transfer of funds to institutions that commit a serious or persistent material breach of the prescribed measures. In December 2025, after years of tolerance and lethargy, National Treasury issued 99 municipalities with notification letters indicating its view that some of their practices were problematic and fell within the ambit of intervention envisaged in Section 216. To this end, the municipalities were required to respond and essentially rebut National Treasury’s proposition. Read: Treasury funding freeze puts further pressure on Nelson Mandela Bay No more funding without accountability for failing municipalities Godongwana hauled to parliament over R13bn municipal funding freeze Thirty municipalities responded substantively enough to be taken off the list. The remaining 69 failed to convince National Treasury that their affairs were in order, and in July National Treasury announced that such municipalities would not receive the July instalment of their equitable share until substantive evidence of getting their affairs in order was provided to National Treasury. The pillars of accountability cited in the National Treasury intervention announcement were focused on: Unfunded budgets (which should not be happening); Non-payments to third parties like Eskom, Sars, the Auditor-General, water boards and pensions funds; The persistence of unauthorised, irregular, fruitless and wasteful expenditure; and Poor consequence management. Municipalities were given indications of what type of evidence would be substantive enough to lift the payment moratorium. Of the cited pillars, the most difficult will be consequence management. The structures that are meant to enforce accountability – disciplinary boards and municipal public accounts committees – are required to deal with those who violate the MFMA and continue to contribute towards poor management of municipalities. Amid a culture of tolerance, one case stands out For a country that has become accustomed to a culture of tolerance towards impunity, the idea of a wholesale culture shift towards swift proactive accountability is fanciful at best. The involvement of political actors in these structures is the primary complexity as political trade-offs and party interests are going to dominate the processes, with the MFMA itself being seen as the problem child that forces political actors to interrogate and maybe sacrifice their own if accountability is to prevail over allegiances. An illustration of the embedded culture of tolerance is the Masemola episode itself. Since he was indicted on charges of violating the PFMA, the big question has not been whether he indeed failed to execute the duties imposed on him by the PFMA, but rather why – in a country where every other public official routinely violates the PFMA and the MFMA – the authorities have chosen to elevate his case to a court process. The irresistible conclusion is that Masemola’s case is not about the desire to uphold the accountability provisions of the PFMA but rather a case of how the PFMA is being used as an instrument of activating processes aimed at Masemola rather than about the procurement practices in the public sector. Read: The endless capture, flirting far too dangerously with national security The chaos and cacophony around his case may indeed contribute towards him being exonerated from this case, but beyond the civil wars of the police service, the question of how far the instruments in the MFMA and the PFMA should be used to enforce accountability and probity will linger long past the duration of the Madlanga Commission of Inquiry into Criminality, Political Interference and Corruption in the Criminal Justice System. National Treasury’s steps may address the payments to third parties and unfunded budgets, but the dimension of consequence management will remain a bigger headache. Google See more of Moneyweb Google News Follow our coverage Newsletters Get news in your inbox Social Media Join the conversation Social media Follow us on our official channels: TAGS: Cat Matlala |  city of joburg |  Fanie Masemola |  Fannie Masemola |  Khaya Sithole |  law enforcement |  MFMA |  National Treasury |  Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi |  PFMA |  police |  Saps |  tenders AUTHOR PROFILE Khaya Sithole   Follow   More articles Khaya Sithole is a chartered accountant, activist and academic. He writes and tweets on matters of politics, economics, finance and social justice. In his spare time, he deals with spreadsheets for various clients in the consulting arena. COMMENTS   0 You must be signed in to comment. SIGN IN SUBSCRIBE or create a free account. Free users can leave 4 comments per month. 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