Limpopo wants its municipal managers and CFOs to be chartered accountants

The Limpopo government says it wants to recruit chartered accountants (CAs) as chief financial officers (CFOs) or municipal managers in its municipalities. The problem is there is a shortage of accountants in the county and most want to work in the big cities.

CAs needed to improve Limpopo’s audit outcomes

The search for chartered accountants is an attempt to improve Limpopo’s municipal annual audit outcomes, which have painted a grim picture in previous financial years.

The province has 22 local municipalities and five district municipalities. Of the 27, only Vhembe district, Capricorn district, Polokwane local and Thabazimbi local municipalities have chartered accounts as CFOs, deputy CFOs or municipal managers. The Giyani local municipality in the Mopani district has just appointed a new CFO on 1 February 2026 . This brings to five the total number of CAs in Limpopo municipalities, as revealed by the Limpopo department of cooperative governance, human settlements and traditional affairs.

Shortage of chartered accountants

According to a government newsletter, South Africa has a shortage of about 5 000 chartered accountants and government has the huge task of trying to fill more than 40% of the vacant posts in the finance and insurance profession.

Of the 34 418 chartered accountants in South Africa, only 1 100 are female Africans and 1 339 are male Africans. A total of 468, the newsletter said, are coloured females, with 478 coloured males. There are 1 347 Indian females, 1 936 Indian males, 7 768 white females and 19 852 white males, claimed the newsletter.

Newly appointed CFO for the Greater Giyani local municipality, Masindi Raliphada, said appointing skilled and qualified personnel in the finance profession often leads to municipalities getting better outcomes from the auditor-general.

“Through teamwork, hard work, dedication and perseverence, this municipaity will soon be harvesting clean audits,” said Raliphada during an interview with The Citizen in Giyani on Wednesday.

Raliphada said attracting, recruiting and retaining chartered accountants in rural provinces can be difficult. She said many in the finance profession preferred to work in urban areas. The shortage of CAs in the country, she said, is also exacerbated by professionals emigrating overseas, driven by better salaries, remote work opportunities and a decline in new graduates.

“But I am from rural Gogobole village in Makhado in the Vhembe district, and it is my honour to be here. I was born and bred in that dusty village, and my dream has always been to plough back into communities that raised me. My goal is to see all the local municipalities in Limpopo and elsewhere improving their annual financial statements, upping their audit outcomes and improving service delivery in communities they serve,” she said.

While Limpopo has produced better audit outcomes in recent years, the same cannot be said about the province’s municipalities.

Of the 27 councils, only the Waterberg district and Capricorn district managed to get clean audits. At the time, the office of the Auditor General of South Africa (AGSA) warned that the hiring of consultants to do municipal financial reporting and shortage of skilled personnel in the finance and insurance profession contributed to the dismal performance of some municipalities.

Wasteful reliance on financial consultants

The auditor-general reports highlighted an often wasteful reliance on consultants – reaching R280 million in the 2023/24 financial year – due to critical skills shortages and poor capacity in financial departments.

The AGSA said more than R180 million was wasted on ineffective consultants, with many municipalities still failing to achieve clean audits, and some even receiving qualified or adverse opinions. The reliance on consultants, the auditor-general said, stems from a lack of qualified staff and an inability to transfer skills from consultants to municipal employees.

Tsakani Baloyi, spokesperson for Coghsta, which oversees the day-to-day running of municipalities in Limpopo, said it was advantageous to have a chartered accountant as a CFO.

“However, this doesn’t guarantee a clean audit because the audit outcome lies with the entire ecosystem of the municipality. Some municipalities, like Waterberg district, do not have a CA as a CFO, but they maintained their clean audit in the last audits,” she said.

Baloyi said all roleplayers in a municipality contribute to the audit outcome.

“Compliance with legislative framework, following proper procedures by all officials, affects the audit outcome.

“Oversight from council is also critical. There is also an audit committee, which is the advisory committee for council, which identifies performance gaps, hence they also review the annual financial statements (AFS) before the audit. Municipal Public Accounts Committee (MPac) also plays oversight as they do investigations for unauthorised, irregular, fruitless and wasteful expenditure incurred by the administration,” explained Baloyi.