EPWP funding to eThekwini halted over ‘jobs for sex’ and ghost beneficiaries scandal:
Public Works and Infrastructure Minister Dean Macpherson has announced that his department will withhold Expanded Public Works Programme (EPWP) funding to eThekwini Metropolitan municipality following an alleged jobs for sex, relatives, political affiliates and cash scandal that has led to payments being made to individuals who did not qualify as beneficiaries.
Macpherson’s decision, announced at a briefing in Durban on Tuesday, follows material irregularities flagged by the Auditor-General of South Africa (AGSA) in the municipality’s administration of the programme in 2021/2022.
KwaZulu-Natal MEC for Public Works and Infrastructure Martin Meyer and deputy director-general for the EPWP, Carmen-Joy Abrahams, were present at the briefing.
The AG report, which was republished in the eThekwini’s draft annual report released for public comment in January, detailed payments made on the EPWP to individuals who did not qualify as beneficiaries, including fictitious “ghost” beneficiaries, deceased beneficiaries and beneficiaries employed in other state institutions.
It also noted payments made without sufficient supporting documents or proof that tasks were performed, in non-compliance with the Municipal Finance Management Act (MFMA).
The non-compliance resulted in a material financial loss of R3.28 million by 31 October 2022, with a likely further loss of R2.34 million for payments to ineligible beneficiaries employed elsewhere in the state.
According to the report, the accounting officer was notified of the material irregularity on 13 December 2022 and provided responses, including progress reports, but the auditor-general assessed that adequate progress had not been made in implementing recommendations by an extended deadline.
These included a full investigation into root causes and possible financial misconduct under the MFMA, recovery of losses, implementation of effective expenditure controls, disciplinary action against officials and reporting to the police where criminal acts are suspected.
Macpherson said his decision to cut EPWP grant funding to the metro for 2026/7 until it investigates the matter and takes corrective action, was not taken lightly.
He said the decision was prompted after he received correspondence from the AGSA regarding the material irregularity identified in the municipality’s administration of the grant dating back to 2021/2022.
“The irregularity relates to payments made for services not rendered in contravention of Section 65 of the Municipal Finance Management Act.
“This means that the municipality was unable to provide verifiable records, including attendance registers and supporting documentation to demonstrate that work was actually performed by the individuals who were paid,” he said.
“The AG’s findings indicate that the municipality’s database included both beneficiaries, deceased beneficiaries, beneficiaries employed elsewhere in government and beneficiaries with no valid identity numbers.”
The matter was serious because funds intended to support poor and unemployed people through work opportunities had been diverted elsewhere. “For many people, EPWP is the difference between food and no food. It is the difference between a household making it through the month or not,” he said.
“When EPWP is abused, it is not only taxpayers who are being robbed. It is the poorest South Africans who are being robbed. It is the unemployed person who should have received an opportunity, but did not,” said Macpherson.
The minister has directed that eThekwini must, within 30 days, pass a council resolution endorsing a full investigation, a detailed remedial action plan with timeframes and support for disciplinary and, where appropriate, criminal proceedings. The municipality must also quantify the loss, identify improper beneficiaries, recover funds and institute consequence management.
“We do not have the luxury of looking away … That is why I have directed to withhold EPWP fund transfers to eThekwini metropolitan municipality in the new 2026/27 financial year until the necessary corrective action has been taken,” he said.
The metro bears responsibility for its expenditure controls, payroll, beneficiary management and record-keeping, while the national department acts to prevent further exposure of funds, the minister said.
According to Meyer, so far 18 whistle-blowers had come forward with “credible and actionable” complaints about corruption involved in the allocation of EPWP jobs in the city.
“These sentiments are similar in nature to the numerous complaints that KZN Public Works and Infrastructure has been getting on its recently launched EPWP anti-fraud and whistleblower portal … where complaints primarily relate to concerns about a lack of transparency in recruitment processes, alleged political interference in recruitment and operational challenges within certain municipalities,” he said.
Meyer said the matter had also emerged as the number one complaint across communities in the province. He said some applicants had complained that they had been asked to pay for jobs, while others were asked for sex or to prove their political affiliation in exchange for work.
Abrahams said her department would support the metro to implement processes and controls to manage the EPWP system.
“It is important when things go wrong that we deal with consequence management,” she said. “We recognise that the AG has engaged us as a partner in relation to this and we will be engaging with regard to the incentive grant because that is the tool we have available as the branch.
“We will, if need be, engage national treasury in regard to the allocation that gets given to the metro,” said Abrahams.
“We want eThekwini to address the audit challenges. We want them to improve on their coordination. We want all the sectors to be revived within the metro… that work opportunities are created and that they take the technical support offered by us and the province,” she said.
However, Meyer noted that whistleblowers had been reluctant to open criminal cases. “The most desperate and the poor are being exploited. They have got these jobs and are very scared of losing the income they have or being victimised by the people in their community.
“So while we know for a fact sex for jobs exists and people do report it, it’s very difficult for us to take any actions,” he said. “But let me be clear, sex for jobs is a form of sexual abuse and a form of rape and it needs criminal charges to be laid for people like that to end up in orange uniforms and be a guest of the government in Westville prison or others.”
Macpherson and his team said that despite the challenges, they aim to depoliticise the programme as it remains a vital tool to provide meaningful work opportunities, valuable skills and support to struggling communities.
“The EPWP is too important to be captured by corruption. It is too important to be weakened by poor controls. And it is too important to fail the people who depend on it,” he said.
Macpherson warned that the metro was not being singled out but that similar action would follow if abuse is identified in other municipalities.
Whistleblowers can report suspected corruption via a QR code on the KZN department’swebsite here.
Here’s how to make drug addiction a health issue, not a criminal one:
It’s still early when Bridget Munnik walks to work. The streets of Westbury in Johannesburg are eerily quiet.
“If it’s daylight, then it’s their time to sleep. For us it’s day and for them it’s night.” When the darkness falls, drug users come out to roam the neighbourhood in the west of Johannesburg, she says. “They’re running around like mad people in the community.”
Auntie Brie, as she’s known by those who come to the skills development programme she runs in the neighbourhood, grew up watching illicit drugs shape her community. Her brothers used dagga and Mandrax, a depressant with sedative and hypnotic effects, which, she says, at least kept her siblings calm.
But today’s methamphetamines, known as tik or crystal meth, are different. These are stimulants that are snorted, smoked or injected and are known for causing violent and bizarre behaviour.
When her sons struggled with drugs, she saw them transform. “I didn’t know they were on drugs. And then I saw the monsters, where they became very aggressive, very, very aggressive.”
It’s a cycle that has trapped generations. Arrests and heavy-handed police crackdowns have done little to break it and drugs continue to flood the community. Today, Westbury is known as one of the city’s deadliest areas, plagued by gangs, violence, unemployment and poverty.
Part of what’s fuelling the addiction crises there and across the country, say experts who Bhekisisa spoke to for its monthly TV programme Health Beat, is that our conflicting approaches to drugs are undermining each other.
A disease or a crime?
Seven years ago, the country launched a revised National Drug Master Plan. It recognises addiction as a chronic disease affecting the brain and behaviour and that approaches to treating it should include what’s known as harm reduction.
Harm reduction is not about expecting drug users to just quit using the substances they’re dependent on; it’s about trying to make sure that they don’t overdose or don’t pass viruses like HIV to other drug users. But in practice, police follow the Drugs and Drug Trafficking Act of 1992, which says drug use is criminal.
“The tragedy of Westbury and other parts of western Johannesburg is the same as the tragedy we see playing out in gang areas in the Western Cape and the Eastern Cape,” Julian Rademeyer, the former director of the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime’s East and Southern Africa research observatory, told Health Beat.
“There’s a cycle of abuse, a cycle of violence that has been continuing for decades.”
He says police focus their efforts on easy targets, including drug mules caught at borders or at points of entry into the country. But Rademeyer, who has reported extensively on organised crime, argues the strategy is doomed to fail.
“These are low-level people, some of the most vulnerable people in the supply chains,” he says. “Many of them are women. Many of them are coerced or threatened or are in such a position of vulnerability that they have no other choice. No one willingly gets on a plane and shoves 200 pellets of cocaine in their stomach.”
Rademeyer says quick and easy arrests of drug mules or low-level drug dealers and users don’t get to the root of the problem — the complex organised crime networks that are fuelling a health crisis that is getting worse and addiction treatment isn’t keeping up.
“Rehabilitation facilities in Africa are a business, and for the poorest of the poor, there are very few opportunities or places for people to go.”
Harm reduction
One of the public facilities that helps people dependent on opiate drugs like heroin or nyaope or whoonga (most commonly a mixture of substances including heroin and cannabis which can be smoked or injected), is Cosup, the Community Oriented Substance Use Programme.
Funded by the City of Tshwane and based at Mamelodi Hospital, the harm reduction clinic is run by the University of Pretoria. There, addicts are also tested for HIV, assisted with wound care and given methadone to treat opiate addiction.
Methadone doesn’t cause as much of a high as heroin or nyaope, and helps curb heroin withdrawal symptoms. Because it is taken orally instead of through needles, which drug dependent people often share, it also lessens the possibility of transmission of HIV between users.
Years of research have repeatedly shown that methadone and similar treatments reduce both HIV and hepatitis C infections among drug users, with the strongest protection when combined with needle exchange programmes.
It’s part of a health-first approach that focuses on the user’s physical and psychological health, taking into account the ways drugs can wreak havoc on relationships with family and friends; a person’s desire or ability to stay in school or keep a job; and the legal problems related to illicit drug use, including buying or selling illegal substances to feed their addiction.
The fundamental principle of harm reduction: you can’t recover if the drugs have killed you. By keeping people who use drugs alive and engaged with services, they’ve got the basic support for all these interconnected harms when they decide to make changes or attempt sobriety.
But public harm reduction clinics like Cosup, whose funding is uncertain from June, are far and few between.
Andrew Scheibe, who works in harm reduction research and policy, isn’t convinced that expensive inpatient detoxification programmes covered by medical aids work. “Because if people come out of one of those 20-day inpatient facilities, they lose their tolerance. If they return to use, they’ve got an increased risk of overdose if they inject.
“But the major issue is that people can’t easily change long-standing habits and deal with long-term trauma over 20 days.”
Harm reduction programmes are among the least expensive public health solutions — including needle exchange programmes and opiate agonist therapy, using methadone treatment — according to the UK-based Harm Reduction International.
Its 2024 report points to modelling in the US, which found that for every dollar invested in a needle exchange programme, $ 6.38 to $ 7.58 (about R105 to 124.50) would be saved in HIV treatment costs alone.
In Vietnam, community-based methadone maintenance therapy was more cost-effective than centre-based compulsory rehabilitation, saving an estimated $ 2 545 (about R41 900) a person over three years, with centre-based compulsory rehabilitation costing over three times more.
Scheibe says that because we only have about 82 000 injecting drug users in South Africa, a small investment would go a long way.
“With every person who becomes HIV infected, we have large numbers of people who need lifelong treatment, increased likelihood of TB treatment, increased likelihood of transmission to other people and the elevated risk of death.”
Scheibe told Health Beat that addiction needed to be treated as a chronic condition, just like hypertension and diabetes, which don’t go away, but can be managed with healthier eating, exercise and medication. “Can we cure hypertension? Can we cure diabetes? [But] some people may shift their life so that it’s no longer a problem.”
The drug economy
Charity Monareng, the director of Students for Sensible Drug Policy International, says she sees promise in the health department’s recognition of drug dependency as a chronic condition that can be treated.
Over the past 15 years, she’s been advocating for drug policies like harm reduction since she first got interested in the work through studying gangs in Cape Town’s Lavender Hill.
“I was always very interested in how young people got involved in gangs and also what they think would be needed to stop gangs,” Monareng says. “And as I delved deeper, I realised that gangs actually fulfil a certain purpose in communities. They create an economy in communities, even though it’s illicit.”
It’s something Munnik constantly sees fuelling drug addiction in Westbury. “If you’re a teenager, you will see that your mom is struggling and here comes a drug dealer and puts something in your hand and that’s easy money,” says Munnik, whose project offers coding, performance art and women’s empowerment programmes.
“That starts with being on the corner selling drugs; then you don’t even realise that your life is in danger.”
It’s helping people stay out or get out of that cycle that helps her keep the faith. “I work with the strength of people. Even if somebody on drugs walks into my space, I don’t see the negativity, the drug. There’s a soul in this body and there’s a brain in this body and these children have dreams, they’ve got visions.”
This story first appeared in Bhekisisa’s monthly television programme Health Beat. Additional support from the Health Beat team, Thatego Mashabela, Yolanda Mdzeke, Ruan Visser and Floris Kotze.
This story was produced by the Bhekisisa Centre for Health Journalism. Sign up for the newsletter.
Universities must confront the shadow of institutional capture:
South Africa’s public universities are facing a governance challenge that can no longer be brushed aside as isolated campus drama.
The spectre of “institutional capture”, where governance processes, decision-making and resource allocation are bent away from the public interest toward factional or private gain, has become a systemic risk.
Universities South Africa (USAf), which represents the country’s 26 public universities, is sounding the alarm and pushing for collective action.
Professor Francis Petersen, the chairperson, says governance cannot remain a campus-by-campus concern.
“Strengthening institutions is part of USAf’s role, including governance,” he says. “We also need to help council members understand the difference between governance and management and how to exercise effective oversight.”
The distinction is crucial. Councils should focus on policy, strategy, risk, performance oversight and the appointment and support of executive leadership. Management, by contrast, must handle day-to-day operations.
When the boundaries blur, universities become vulnerable to capture, whether through political interference, reputational attacks or opportunistic meddling in procurement and tenders.
A climate of pressure and misinformation
The risks are not abstract. Petersen points to sustained attacks on executive leadership, often emanating from the political sphere, including parliament’s portfolio committee on higher education.
“Oversight is legitimate but when it preempts due process or amplifies allegations prematurely, it damages universities,” he says.
In today’s climate, reputational risks are amplified by misinformation campaigns. Allegations circulate rapidly, coordinated narratives distort public perceptions and confidence in institutions erodes before internal processes conclude.
Petersen warns that governance depends on disciplined procedures — clear timelines, documented decisions and communication that balances transparency with fairness.
The weak induction of council members compounds the problem. Without proper training, even well-intentioned members can intervene inappropriately. In some cases, dishonesty within institutions escalates unchecked, weakening controls and corroding trust.
The University of Fort Hare and Mangosuthu University of Technology are among those
grappling with governance strain, underscoring the urgency of USAf’s intervention.
From webinar to reform
On 23 March, USAf hosted a governance webinar titled Institutional Governance: Confronting the Risks of Institutional Capture. Moderated by professor Dr Letticia Mmaseloadi Moja, the former council chair at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, the closed session followed a December 2025 vice-chancellors’ retreat.
The webinar was not intended as a one-off conversation. Petersen insists its insights must be embedded in USAf programmes, particularly induction and continuing development for council members.
Practical content is key: clarifying fiduciary duties, conflicts of interest, procurement boundaries, oversight of disciplinary processes and protocols for council management interaction.
Governance will remain on the agenda across USAf platforms, including the biannual
higher education conference in October. Public engagement is also essential, Petersen
says, so that good governance is visible, problems are addressed decisively and risks
are prevented where possible.
Shared guidance and peer support
Although USAf has not formally discussed shared frameworks, Petersen believes model
policies, induction checklists, conflict of interest guidance and clearer protocols for handling allegations against executives could help. Peer learning and rapid support mechanisms would allow institutions to respond consistently when early warning signs emerge.
Most councils, he stresses, serve with integrity. But continuous learning is vital
as risks evolve. Councils must protect their independence by managing conflicts of interest, keeping clear records and ensuring oversight is exercised through proper committees rather than informal influence.
The role of the department of higher education and training
Alignment between USAf councils and the department of higher education and training
is “immensely important”, Petersen says. Fragmented signals between councils, executives, USAf and the department create openings for external actors to exploit uncertainty.
Despite capacity challenges, Petersen sees the relationship with the department improving. “With the attitude of the new minister, the two deputy ministers and the officials, I’m very hopeful and positive that that is what we’re going to achieve from now onwards,” he notes. Constructive partnership is essential for universities to operate at their best.
What success looks like
For USAf, success over the next year would mean greater stability in the sector: fewer
prolonged leadership suspensions, fewer governance crises escalating into systemwide
distractions and more balanced engagement with universities.
Oversight should continue but less politically driven “attack” and greater reliance on evidence and due process are needed. Public discourse must also improve, with fewer misinformation-driven narratives and more confidence that universities can investigate, decide and communicate outcomes fairly.
Defending credibility
Ultimately, Petersen identifies credibility as the single most important governance principle to defend. “The integrity of the institution, managed in a transparent, open and honest way, is where we start to bring public trust back,” he says. Fraud, corruption, dishonesty and social issues such as gender-based violence all threaten credibility.
Restoring trust requires universities to articulate the value of higher education, defend its core values and build trust not only with the public but also with the government.
As Petersen prepares to take part in a global seminar on the democratic mission of universities, he underscores the broader stakes: higher education is expanding worldwide but costs remain high. Leaders must explain its value, articulate its values and defend trust.
A collective responsibility
Institutional capture is not a problem any single university can solve alone. It demands collective vigilance, shared learning and systemic reform. USAf’s intervention signals recognition that governance is the bedrock of credibility.
Without it, universities risk becoming pawns in factional battles, their public mission compromised.
For South Africa’s universities, the path forward is clear: sharpen governance, strengthen induction, embed ethical practices and defend credibility. Only then, he says, can higher education fulfil its democratic mission and retain the trust of the society it serves.
©Higher Education Media Services. This was published on ednews.africa
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