Jose Prado, Anglo American

One doesn’t have to look very far, at least in South Africa, to find examples of lax or negligent financial reporting. Only 41 municipalities out of 275 managed to turn in clean audits for the 2023/24 financial year, and among the country’s eight metros, only Cape Town managed to produce an untarnished one.

Auditor General Tsakani Maluleke, addressing Parliament’s cooperative governance portfolio committee on local government in May, said the quality of financial audits in metros and municipalities left much to be desired. In the case of Johannesburg, she said it should have no difficulty in attracting people with the skills to compile proper financial statements.