Twenty-four projects, one systemic warning

The Auditor-General of South Africa’s 2024-25 consolidated report examined 24 housing projects across all nine provinces with a combined value of R5.67 billion. Twenty-three had findings. Twenty were delayed, 13 had cost issues, 15 showed poor build quality and six had commissioning shortcomings.

This was an audit sample, not a census of every subsidised-housing project. It was also geographically broad enough to expose a repeating project-life-cycle problem: units can advance through construction and certification while the settlement around them remains incomplete.

AGSA said some projects were signed off as complete without essential services such as electricity, water and sanitation. That is more than a technical paperwork failure. A house without dependable services cannot deliver the intended living conditions, and later remedial work can cost more than coordinating the connections before handover.

Delay measured in years

In the audited sample, 83% of projects were delayed. The report says some had been delayed for close to two decades. KwaZulu-Natal’s four sampled projects had findings across project management and commissioning; all four were delayed, had cost issues, showed poor build quality and had commissioning shortcomings.

Those numbers should be read as results for the projects selected. They should also trigger a broader question for every provincial department: which active projects have exceeded their original completion dates, and by how long?

A project that remains “under construction” in annual reports can pass through several contractors, revised scopes and budget cycles. Unless departments preserve and publish a single project history, each new appointment can obscure the decisions that produced the delay.

The split-accountability problem

Housing delivery crosses institutional boundaries. A provincial human-settlements department may fund top structures. A municipality may be responsible for land-use approvals, roads, water, sewerage or electricity. Another utility may own the bulk connection. An implementing agent or provincial infrastructure department may manage construction.

When programmes are not sequenced, houses can finish before bulk capacity or reticulation. Contractors may leave site while another authority still has to approve or build a connection. Beneficiary allocation and title transfer can introduce further delay after physical work.

AGSA linked the failures to poor planning and weak intergovernmental coordination. That diagnosis means a single “percentage complete” is inadequate. Each dependency needs its own owner, budget and date.

Expenditure monitoring missed completion risk

The audit office said national oversight of grants to provinces focused on spending instead of project completion and that capacity constraints prevented verification of every project. Expenditure monitoring can identify underspending, but it cannot establish whether work is defect-free or whether residents can use the services.

The 2023-24 audit cycle had already found delays and quality problems in infrastructure. Across six sectors, AGSA audited 143 projects: 92 were delayed, with an average delay of 34 months; 36 had poor build quality; and 11 were not commissioned. In human settlements specifically, 20 of 25 sampled projects were delayed in that earlier cycle, with an average delay of 35 months.

The persistence of findings in the following year suggests that recommendations were not being converted quickly enough into project controls.

What a complete settlement record needs

A public project register should keep the original scope and date visible beside every revision. It should identify land ownership and approvals, professional team, contractors, contract values, variations, payments, units started and completed, defects, roads and stormwater, water and sewer connections, electricity, beneficiary verification, occupation and title transfer.

The record should also state the basis for completion. Practical completion of a building contract, completion of a top structure, connection of services and lawful occupation are distinct milestones.

This level of detail prevents a project from appearing complete in one system and stalled in another.

Quality and the cost of returning

AGSA found poor build quality at 63% of the 24 housing projects. The report warned that defects could place residents’ safety at risk and create additional remedial costs. Once units are occupied, correcting structural, roofing, drainage or service defects becomes more disruptive and harder to recover from the original contractor.

Departments therefore need evidence that defects were recorded, repaired and independently closed within the contractual defects period. A final payment or completion certificate should not erase the defects trail.

The questions that follow the audit

For every delayed settlement, oversight bodies should ask who owns the integrated programme, which dependency currently controls the completion date, whether the budget covers the whole serviced settlement and how many households can lawfully occupy now.

They should also ask what action followed poor performance. Contract termination can protect the state, but it can also introduce a new procurement delay. The public record should explain the decision, the work left on site, security costs, claims and the plan for a replacement contractor.

How we reported this investigation

This investigation is based on AGSA’s 2023-24 and 2024-25 consolidated national and provincial audit reports and its published media release. Percentages describe the projects audited, not the national housing portfolio. Findings of delay, cost issues or poor quality do not by themselves establish fraud by a named party.

What we will track next

For Housing signed off without services: inside the audit trail of incomplete settlements, physical completion should be connected to the passenger journey. Track access, signalling, power, security, scheduled services, cancellations and the condition of station facilities rather than relying on an opening announcement alone.

A useful close-out record identifies which systems are operating permanently, which remain under temporary arrangements and who responds when lifts, gates, lighting or information systems fail. The service outcome is the final test of the capital work.

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