Are you hyper excited about the planned forensic audits (FAs)? Hardly three weeks into his freshly minted presidency, in his debut State of the Nation Address, Duma Boko announced the government’s resolve to unearth past government malfeasance through a sweeping forensic audit.
Naturally, this sparked a firestorm of hope and expectation. And that heightened sense of unbridled anticipation continues to swell, fuelled further by the Vice President’s Budget Speech, which delivered a hard-edged reality; the inevitable yet unwelcome hikes in income and corporate tax rates for targeted income brackets and corporates. Countrywide, an acapella choir has risen, singing in sharp and indignant unison. The chorus for its chant of despair is as deafening as it is gripping. Its clear refrain continues to earworm itself into the minds of riled up compatriots who sing in a hummed undertone of frustration, expressing their exhaustion, discontent and quiet resistance at the wound that won’t heal any time soon; why should any taxpayer irrespective of the quantum of their hard-earned income foot the bill for the sins of those who gorged themselves on public coffers and now sit unscathed atop their ill-gotten wealth? The promise of holding the powerful accountable for their role in draining the state’s coffers is undeniably enchanting. The idea of skeletons buried in the ledgers of bureaucracy suddenly exposed would pull even the stealthiest and heaviest of sleepers among our compatriots from the depth of regenerative delta-wave sleep. While the prospect of a FA is a step towards transparency and accountability, it is imperative to temper the nation’s excitement with a calculated dose of rationality.
The journey to uncover the rot is fraught with complexities that must be carefully managed to ensure the audit delivers tangible value. Far from being a silver bullet, a FA can mutate into a double-edged sword that, if not wielded judiciously, can evolve into a divisive damp squib that yields a poisoned chalice of political instability rather than substantive reform, hence the need to curb our overinflated enthusiasm. Spelled out plainly, FAs are not your run-of-the-mill financial audits. They are more like surgical operations designed to dissect complex transactions, trace illicit flows of money, and hold individuals accountable for their actions. Typically, they are time-consuming and resource-intensive, and for state-orchestrated interventions, even with the best of intentions, they tend to evolve into covertly choreographed political manoeuvres. Are FAs effective? When executed effectively and impartially, they can restore public trust, recover stolen assets, and, to a degree, deter future corruption. The intense euphoria displayed countrywide by politicians and non-politicians alike sends chills down my spine, primarily because it reflects failure to appreciate that the broad scale mania for such audits often overshadow intricate challenges. Much more than a hollow primal truth, it is a law older than language itself that, “even the best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry.” Unchecked enthusiasm could lead to disillusionment if the process is slower or more complex than imagined, while a lack of urgency could stifle the momentum needed for real change. By balancing the fervour for accountability with a measured understanding of the intricacies involved, the new administration can channel its energy into a sustainable force for reform, ensuring the audits yield meaningful results. The government must ensure that all planned FAs are guided by well-calculated strategic probes hinged on objective cost-benefit analyses. Globally, FA firms harbour no qualms about lining the pockets of their partners through perfectly structured, watertight and poke-hole-resistant processes skewed towards bilking firms. What more, if the client is a whole government globally renowned for being awash with the world’s most coveted diamonds! To appreciate the quantum of cost involved, reflect on South Africa’s Zondo Commission. This was a macro-level quasi-judicial process that relied heavily on public hearings and therefore broad in scope and perhaps less intensive, as opposed to our country’s envisaged fully-fledged FA that is bound to be narrowly scoped, more data-driven intensive, and micro-level in nature. Despite this, the financial burden on taxpayers surpassed the whopping R1 billion mark. Furthermore, the prolonged duration of the judicial commission of inquiry, which took over four years to deliver its final report, should impel us to think long and hard about the scope and nature of the envisaged audit. It is in the nature of clueless people holding leadership positions to throw money at problems, especially when it has not been earned through painstaking hands-on sweat. Our government should not fall into the same pitfall.