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The case of suspended Police Commissioner Fannie Masemola has prompted some people to argue that, because he is not alleged to have personally profited from corruption, he is somehow less guilty than those who did.

Those making the argument miss the obvious point that if accounting officers did their job of maintaining oversight over State spending for which they are accountable, the State would not be awash in corruption.

While the spectacle of the head of the country’s police service appearing in court alongside an alleged mafia don may be jarring, the fact is that the mafia don was only able to milk the State for Millions of Rands because of Masemola’s alleged tender oversight failures.

Holding Masemola accountable for these alleged lapses highlights the broader principle of public finance accountability across the State. It is a principle that should be applied consistently across all spheres of government.

Charging Masemola under the Public Finance Management Act sends a very clear message to all accounting officers that they can and should be held personally accountable for gross negligence in the management of public funds.

Each year, the Auditor-General reports widespread irregular expenditure across national departments, provinces, municipalities, and state-owned entities. Yet only in exceptional cases are senior accounting officers held criminally accountable.

This is not about whether irregular expenditure is, in itself, a crime. It is not.

It is about where the legal threshold under the Public Finance Management Act or the Municipal Finance Management Act is met —particularly in cases of gross negligence, ignored warnings, or continued unlawful expenditure.

The consequences are too rare and inconsistent to instil a culture among accounting officers in which they accept that the buck stops with them.

This gap is evident across all spheres of government and directly contributes to an environment in which malfeasance could occur.

At the municipal level, in the City of Cape Town, a major law enforcement investigation has targeted alleged procurement fraud linked to municipal contracts valued at approximately R1.6 billion. The criminality is said to involve multiple sites and officials as part of a wider forensic probe into housing and infrastructure procurement processes.

In Gauteng, the City of Johannesburg has repeatedly recorded irregular expenditure findings over multiple audit cycles, with A-G reports highlighting procurement deviations, weaknesses in consequence management, and ongoing financial governance challenges in a major metro with significant public service delivery obligations.

At the national level, state-owned entities such as Eskom, Transnet, and Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa have all experienced sustained governance failures and irregular expenditure findings over many years, with extensive documentation through the A-G and the Zondo Commission.

Yet despite the scale and persistence of these findings, accounting officers who’ve been held criminally accountable are about as common as hen’s teeth.

Where action is taken, consequence management is usually delayed or incomplete.

If the threshold for criminal liability under public finance law is met in Masemola’s case, it must be applied consistently in all comparable cases, regardless of institutional reputation, political sensitivity, or sphere of government.  

The NPA must step up and act on qualifying A-G findings. Instead of being ignored and repeated annually, the findings must be assessed by the NPA on a case-by-case basis. Clear and transparent criteria must be developed when gross negligence triggers a criminal investigation, with regular public reporting of outcomes across all spheres of government. 

Accountability cannot depend on exposure through tip-offs to the media, factional fall-out, or political will. It must be systematised and grounded in fair and consistent application across the State.

Issued by GOOD Secretary-General Brett Herron