The office of the auditor general has come under attack from the old guard as well as the new – for doing its job properly. Henri Kluever is standing his ground, reports Mungo Soggot
THE auditor general, Henri Kluever, has not had much luck with the Ministry of Mineral and Energy Affairs. As he took his seat at a parliamentary committee meeting in 1995 to explain why Mossgas, PW Botha’s synthetic fuel producer, was a financial black hole, he greeted the then mineral and energy affairs minister with a polite “How are you?” Pik Botha shot back: “What’s it got to do with you?”
Now, two years later, Botha’s successor, Penuell Maduna, has given the auditor general’s office its most severe drubbing since the passing of the new Constitution.
In Parliament, Maduna criticised Kluever’s office for failing to find evidence of foul play in the state’s oil companies – evidence the minister says he has unearthed with the help of a team of auditors from the private sector. Maduna has not let the auditor general’s office in on his investigation, the preliminary results of which were used to justify the suspension of the state’s top oil trader, Kobus van Zyl.
Maduna trumpeted the discovery by his auditors of a R170-million loss from the transfer of oil stocks. The loss referred to a “book debit” – a reflection of the Strategic Fuel Fund’s conservative accounting policy and not its efforts to pilfer state oil.
After the parliamentary lashing, which followed a series of snipes by Maduna’s office in the press, Kluever’s office decided against a public rebuttal – a decision he insists should be interpreted as cautious, not timid.
“I am not reluctant to take on anybody,” says Kluever. “It is easy enough to make enemies and we try not to. If push comes to shove we will. The problem is then you have made a more or less permanent enemy of the guy. I had that with the previous government too.”
Kluever’s office has openly slated financial mismanagement in both the national and provincial government. He is reluctant to finger the worst managed province. “But I can give an idea of some of the front runners in the competition: the Eastern Cape, the Northern Province. The front runners for the best-run provinces are Gauteng and the Western Cape.”
In his address to Parliament on the national government’s1995/96 accounts, Kluever said he had “serious doubts” about 22 departments’ accounts. Highlights of his critical tour of government’s shoddy financial mismanagement included R58-million in unauthorised expenditure at the Departmentof Health, which included R10- million on the Sarafina II Aids play.
Kluever, who was appointed for a seven-year term in 1993, is keen to emphasise the similarities between his treatment by the old government and the new. But he says: “It is my impression that the new government has not been enjoying this criticism, to put it bluntly. I am not sure if the displeasure is increasing, but it would seem so from some …”
He agrees Maduna’s attack is the most significant yet. “I am not immune to it. I still get all tensed up about it. If it becomes too general an attack on the attorney general’s office then I will have to take the government on and ask, do you want first-class auditing or don’t you? If government does not like the reporting that results from applying those standards then they must tell me what they want.”
The key difference between the auditor general’s status under the old and new regimes is that it, and other watchdog bodies like the public protector, are protected by the Constitution. The Constitution says these institutions “must be impartial and must exercise their powers and perform their functions without fear, favour or prejudice”. It also says: “Other organs of state, through legislative and other measures, must assist and protect these institutions to ensure the independence, impartiality, dignity and effectiveness of these institutions.” Considering the paltry state of political opposition, bodies like the auditor general are key checks on untrammelled African National Congress rule.
Kluever says he has already sought informal legal advice on Maduna’s attack and will probably seek formal counsel.
“I assure you we will not take it lying down. What I am doing is following due process. I did report fully to the [parliamentary] audit commission and they have to meet now.”
Kluever is reluctant to discuss tensions between his predominantly white office and the government in the context of an old guard-new guard struggle.
“The thing that is furthest from the mind of a financial technician like myself is politics. I try to understand it. There is only one world and there is only one auditing standard that applies. So the fact that you are white or brown or black makes no difference. You are going to apply those standards and you are going to get those results.”
Kluever says his office’s report on the Mpumalanga housing scandal – which involved friends of Minister of Housing Sankie Mthembi-Mahanyele – will contain no political comment. He says the report, due out shortly after Parliament reconvenes, will refer to any relationships that could have influenced due process, but that it will go no further. So he is unlikely to say anything about the role of director generals as whistle-blowers. In the Mpumalanga case, former housing director general Billy Cobbett alerted Kluever to the deal – which involved the granting of a R200-million housing contract to an unknown company run by the housing minister’s friend – and subsequently lost his job.
But Kluever has no immediate plans to take early retirement. “I feel I am making a contribution to making the new South Africa work. As long as I have that feeling I am prepared to stick it out.” He does add, rather swiftly, “I have got 29 months to go.”