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Administration
MPAC quarterly report
Agenda #5August 20, 2026
Summary
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The quarterly report of the Municipal Public Accounts Committee as at 30 June 2026 will be presented for noting.
The Municipal Public Accounts Committee (MPAC) is an oversight committee of Council. Council set it up under section 79A of the Municipal Structures Act. Its job is to scrutinise how the executive spends public money. It plays a role similar to that of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts (SCOPA) at national and provincial level. It also acts as the City's oversight committee for annual reports. Under section 129 of the Municipal Finance Management Act (MFMA), it must consider and evaluate the annual reports of the City and its municipal entities. It reports to Council regularly, and quarterly reports like this one are tabled "for noting". Council is not asked to make a decision on them. The reports give a record of the committee's activity, such as investigations, task teams and reviews of irregular or wasteful expenditure.
Cape Town was the first municipality in South Africa to establish a public accounts committee. Transparency has been a recurring issue. The City's Terms of Reference, adopted by Council on 27 July 2023, say MPAC meetings are open to the public, except special and confidential meetings. The GOOD Party has complained that its request to open task-team investigations to the public was dismissed as not legally compliant. Commentary on the 2026/27 budget has repeated the criticism. It claims that key MPAC discussions are held behind closed doors and that irregular and wasteful expenditure registers are treated as confidential.
The quarterly report matters to residents because it shows how actively Council is checking spending, and whether money lost through irregular expenditure is being followed up and recovered.
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