A VIEW OF THE WEEK: Forget VAT and trim the fat of corruption

One of the most anxiety-inducing moments of the month for many of us is when the water and electricity bill comes.

Often, it can be a roulette of what will be charged, and family meetings are called to discuss what we can do to make sure we do not waste resources.

You quickly learn that all the conservation efforts in the world won’t help if there is a leak. And that leak or drip can sometimes just be patched with a new washer in a tap. R7 for that plastic black ring can save hundreds and possibly thousands in the long run.

Leaking money

On a much larger scale, water and electricity are being “leaked” at municipal level at alarming rates. Last month, City of Johannesburg speaker, Nobuhle Mthembu, said that 30% of water in Gauteng is lost to leaks. That is a far more conservative estimate than the DA’s 46% lost through leaks, burst pipes, and failing infrastructure.

In Gauteng, R2.4 billion is reportedly lost due to these leaks. In eThekwini, where the amount of lost water is over half, this reportedly translates to about R1.8 billion a year in direct, wasted costs and R7.6 billion a year in lost revenue.

As illegal connections pop up like pimples on a teenager, municipalities are losing billions. Between July 2022 and June 2023, Johannesburg lost R4.2 billion in possible electricity revenue.

Both of these losses are dwarfed by R1.5 trillion estimated in 2021 to have been lost due to corruption between 2014 and 2019. That number, too, has skyrocketed in the years since the figure was reported.

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Wrong target, Godongwana

So when finance minister Enoch Godongwana took to the parliament pulpit on Wednesday to preach austerity and justify his obsession with a VAT increase, he may have been giving the wrong sermon.

While we spend some of the highest proportions of budgets on education, health, and social welfare in the world, the lack is still extremely apparent. Hundreds of millions earmarked for service delivery are also returned to the treasury annually because of incompetence, infighting, and political point-scoring.

It is time to stop patching up the surface wounds and look at the underlying causes: corruption and wasteful expenditure.

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Corruption shedding

The minister should be diverting more money to the anti-corruption units within each government department.

With an increased budget and political will, the corrupt taps that flow to cadres and dodgy business people can be tightened. More funds can be recovered, and future budgets can prioritise essential social services, safe in the knowledge that the money will be less likely to be wasted.

It is a short-term pain for a long-term gain approach that politicians love to throw around as they implement load shedding and water rationing as a solution for failing to deliver basic human rights to communities.

Taking a leaf out of their own book, corruption shedding should be implemented. Services and departments should be shut down for “maintenance” as quickly as substations and water reservoirs are. Full investigations into all tenders, workflows, and processes should be done, from the cleaner to the CEO. Lifestyle audits should also be done for all government workers, not just sporadically and at surface level.

As idealistic as this sounds, it may never see the light because many of those who make the ultimate decision for implementation are themselves feeding from the trough.

And who would have an appetite for change when you are already filling up on taxpayers’ money with no one to hold you accountable?

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