Cape Town - Normal relations between the provincial Department of Agriculture and the Auditor-General of SA (AGSA) have been restored since the confirmation by the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) of the high court’s decision to set aside AGSA’s qualified audit reports of the department for the 2017/2018 financial year.
The status of the agreement between the department and AGSA was the subject of a briefing of the provincial Scopa which had invited the two organisations to discuss how a future recurrence of the problem could be avoided.
Speaking before the briefing got under way, Scopa chairperson Lulama Mvimbi (ANC) said he was still of the belief that the matter should never have gone as far as it did and that both sides should have sought the services of a neutral body such as the Accounting Standards Board before heading off to the courts.
Chief financial officer Floris Huysamer said: “Over an 18-month period we tried to persuade the AGSA that its findings were flawed from an accounting and legal perspective in terms of the above principle. The AGSA refused to concede.”
He said following the SCA decision, the National Treasury put processes in place to deal with disputes between the auditor and auditee, which would mostly lead to the avoidance of a recurrence of the court action.
Committee member Gillion Bosman (DA) asked the department how much the legal challenge cost would be while MPL Andricus van der Westhuizen (DA) wanted to know what the implications for the department would have been had the AG’s complaint been upheld.
Responding to Van der Westhuizen, he said: “The implications largely would have been that our efficiencies in terms of supporting or settling black farmers in this province would have been affected in a big way.”
EFF MPL Melikhaya Xego wanted to know what would happen if the mechanisms put in place to prevent the problem’s recurrence were to fail.
Huysamer said: “AGSA remains a Chapter 9 institution in terms of the Constitution, should any of their auditees not agree with their finding and they are adamant in their decision, a case can still end up in court.”