TSHWANE'S R777 MILLION WATER TANKER EXPENDITURE RAISES CONCERNS OVER FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT

The City of Tshwane say the R777 million spent on water tankers is a “myth,” but when you unpack their own data, the truth is just as worrying:  The R156 million “pending cancellations”  They claim these purchase orders should be excluded — but they’re still on the books. Until those cancellations are formally processed, that money is still committed. Taking it out now is pure window-dressing — a bookkeeping trick to shrink the total on paper. The accruals from 2023/24  Accruals are a standard accounting process — invoices for services already delivered but paid later. Whether paid in June or July, the expenditure is real. Removing them to make the current year’s spend look smaller is misleading. The “previous administration” comparison  They want to frame this as an improvement. But even after stripping away all their creative accounting, actual spending on tankers remains massive — roughly R400 million, and up to R600 million if you include pending cancellations. That’s hardly the turnaround they’re trying to sell. So yes, maybe it’s not exactly R777 million — but slicing off accruals, backdating invoices, and re-labelling pending orders doesn’t change the bottom line: hundreds of millions are still being poured into water tankers instead of permanent water infrastructure. And as for the claim that tanker costs “correlate” with outages — of course they do. More outages mean more tankers. The real question is why those outages keep happening and why there’s no long-term fix. If anything, this press briefing confirms what residents already know: money keeps flowing, but water doesn’t. Their argument, quite frankly, doesn’t hold water. at the end of the day - it really is not about the parties did this or that - the bottom line is that the water is still not fixed in Hammanskraal GUEST: DR FERRIAL ADAM – WATERCAN EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR