It’s difficult to get a direct answer from the new Auditor General, Terence Nombembe, even to a question as personal and direct as: ”Do you think you should be paid more?”
He has a way of responding without really answering the question. To this he would only answer: ”I think I should be paid a package that is commensurate with the job that I do,” adding that the package is being worked out by the ”relevant stakeholders”.
Nevertheless, he comes across as a focused man, clear about the issues affecting his office. ”We want to professionalise the office so that it operates like a private sector audit firm,” he says in a cotton-soft voice, noting that the work his office does is what any audit firm does, the only difference being that it ”audits government departments”.
A minute into our interview I saw why Nombembe said one of the office’s greatest challenges was its reporting. Several times during the interview I had to ask him to explain himself again as I got lost in an audit language fog. He said the office wants to make its reports more ”understandable to people without an audit background … so that when the report is tabled in Parliament people understand what the report is about”.
”We are currently sitting at 80:20” — 20% white males and 80% African, Indians and females — he said of the gender and racial make-up of his department. Transforming it is part of the commitment the office has made to Parliament. But he is keenly aware of the broader landscape in the industry, arguing that ”for us to transform the office we have to transform the profession”.
Some analysts have noted that Nombembe is reserved and not confrontational enough, a requirement of the job when faced with errant government departments. ”The nature of the job is not about being flamboyant,” he counters. ”There is no difficulty in engaging with relevant government officials. It is something that I have always been doing.” He explains that this confrontation is not done in ”the public fora” but in the audit and reporting processes. ”I do this quite comfortably. It’s essential that I be seen to be clear about the audit processes and outcomes. Whether one is reserved or not does not come into it.”
When you speak to Nombembe, you are acutely aware of the office, not the man, who rarely uses the first person singular. The few times he did, it was to say ”what I will do is not different from what the office has been pursuing in the past decade”, pointedly adding that ”this organisation should not be pursuing one man’s vision but be consulting all our stakeholders”.
Nombembe says his office is working towards making the audit process more comprehensive until such a time as performance audits are done. The message he wants to send to government departments is to utilise ”funds in an effective, efficient and economic way”. He says his office is striving ”to get the basics right so that our public accounts are not undermined by the failure of government to account fully for what they have allocated”.