Power FM, Wednesday night

We are now with municipalities, and maybe Roman will tell me, but absolutely, yeah, no, go for it, go for it. Maybe talk. Um, you know, you know, we are in an environment where administration has been highly politicized, and this is the downside of politicization of administration. Okay, um, and the other issue is that we need to marry compliance with performance. Uh, a municipality may achieve clean audit, as you have correctly put it out, while communities continue.

To experience water shortages, deteriorating roads, inadequate sanitation, poor infrastructure maintenance. You know, the audit assesses financial reporting, compliance, and reported performance information. It does not, on its own, establish whether the municipality is fulfilling its developmental mandate. The other biggest issue that we need to look at is this consultants and compliance approach. It is okay, but we must understand that compliance is necessary, but is it sufficient?

I doubt if it's insufficient. The problem is not pursuit of clean audit around financial accountability, even though it's a fundamental good governance issue. The problem arises when compliance becomes an end in itself rather than a means of improving institutional performance and developmental outputs. So it is important that we find a good balance between compliance and performance. And unfortunately, we are lacking around performance.

Again, I'll go back to the templates that often refer to: you know, the performance culture, we are mediocre, we are expecting mediocre results. And if we are to push high targets, expanded targets, performance, we are likely to move the developmental needle slightly bit more because we've hired competent people, then the organizational environment is conducive, and we know that people have been killed every now and again. Competent people are afraid.

To be part of that kind of environment. That's true. It's true. And you need to protect. We've heard from Adana Commission, we've been in so many instances where people have been killed every day. Recent blowers, yes. As you want to. But if your life is being threatened because of how the environment it looks like, it's a fallacy to expect performance under those kinds of circumstances. So we do need to really find a way of balancing compliance and performance.