Poor Financial Management in South African Municipalities: Assessing Factors Contributing to Undesirable Audit Opinion

South African municipalities are the entities closest to citizens in local communities across the country, and they are required to provide services to them. The sustainable provision of services is heavily reliant on sound public finance management in all levels of government. It is unfortunate that municipalities in South Africa are failing to effectively manage and use public funds to improve service delivery. Most South African municipalities have received negative audit opinions for years, and their current financial situation is deteriorating year after year. This is concerning for a country that has recently celebrated 30 years of democracy; it is unfortunate that democratic gains are being reversed due to issues within South African municipalities such as irregular, fruitless, and wasteful expenditure, non-compliance, a lack of skills, a lack of consequence management, political infighting, corruption, and poor leadership, to name a few. Citizens are the ones who pay the price at the end of the day when services owed to them are not delivered by municipalities due to poor financial management. The objective of this paper is to examine the causes of unsatisfactory audit outcomes in the South African local government sector and recommend solutions to for improving financial management in South African municipalities. To achieve this objective, a systematic literature review was chosen as the appropriate research methodological strategy for this paper