Auditor General

Warrant Officer Sander claims that despite being accused of corruption, he managed the DPCI armory and passed an audit with clean results from the Auditor General.

“Let us just say my office I had a vault full of fully automatic weapons at my disposal...I took over the armoury for the DPCI....We got a clean audit from the Auditor General for all our weapons and ammunition....If I was corrupt, I would not sell drugs, I would sell guns.”

The urgency to communicate directly with Deputy Chief Dhlamini was due to prior escalations and messages received that needed resolution before financial year-end to avoid disputes impacting City's books and the Auditor-General's report.

“Your recall earlier on the escalations and the phone calls and the messages that were received, this was urgent for me because this needed to be resolved. I did not want a situation of this nature to reoccur. We are sitting at a stage where we are sitting almost end of the month... Accou... must be dealt with accordingly.”

MR MNISI said outstanding invoices must be adequately reconciled before the end of the financial year to avoid a qualification error by the Auditor-General and to ensure proper financial statements.

“Outstanding invoices from this point in time must be adequately reconciled and captured accordingly. If it is issued on the... I want to see the actual letter... The letter is issued on the 24th of June, not July... It is his responsibility to ensure full alignment... I would not want to be engaged in a process after year-end dealing with outstanding purchase orders that could not have been dealt with at this point in time.”

MR MNISI clarified that the purpose of the meeting with General Dhlamini was not to arrange purchase orders but to ensure books are in order before year-end, avoiding surprises in financial statements and qualifications by the Auditor-General.

“The purpose was to ensure that the books are in order, that we do not get a surprise after year-end after financial statements have closed... This letter stops the services from the 1st of July. What happened between then and now? Were there any further deployments? How has those been dealt with? Was the budget available? Were purchase orders captured? I would not want a repeat... submitting financial statements to the AG with such force could result in a qualification error.”

Mr Mnisi acknowledges past financial statement restatements due to errors found by the Auditor General and emphasizes need to avoid repeat errors this time.

“The previous year I had to make restatements on the financial statements as a correction of findings that were picked up by the Auditor General... We had to accept that indeed these are... that are outstanding... So it was something that was not occurring correctly in the past, hence this time around we needed to ensure that this finding does not repeat itself...”

The Auditor-General relies on third-party confirmations, which are superior to internal reports such as probity reports.

“The Auditor-General relies on a third-party confirmation . This is a third-party confirmation that I would rather place my reliance on than an internal report as well .”

The Auditor General did not raise, or the witness does not recall any issues in the 2024-25 financial year about the ad hoc security services.

“I cannot recall ... I do not think so, but I am not sure”

The witness will check and provide evidence if the Auditor General flagged issues related to ad hoc security services for the 2024-25 period.

“I will check in the break. I will see if I can find that information ... We will do so, Commissioner, definitely”