Government officials have an important obligation to the public to pursue due diligence in their day-to-day work. They have to check that they are following sound practices and fulfill legislative requirements, especially when managing finances and issuing contracts.

The Public Finance Management Act and the Municipal Finance Management Act are two important legislative frameworks that enable accounting officers to manage and be held accountable for the public resources they use.

The outbreak of cholera in Hammanskraal, north of Pretoria, which has killed over 20 people, provides a case study of the severity of the harm that can flow from failure to conduct due diligence.

While the source of the cholera is yet to be identified, water problems in Hammanskraal are historic and relate to the pollution of water sources in the area from the Rooiwal Wastewater Treatment Works.

In 2018, a R292m Rooiwal contract was awarded to a joint venture between CMS Water Engineering, NJR Projects and Blackhead Consulting. According to a forensic report into the contract, five City of Tshwane officials ignored obvious red flags which would have immediately eliminated the companies from the tender process.

The result of this has been that the upgrade of the Rooiwal plant was cancelled, leaving the project unfinished and residents of Hammanskraal without clean water fit for human consumption.

Now, as we reported in this newspaper yesterday, CMS, which was part of the Tshwane joint venture, scored another tender with the department of water and sanitation just months before they were booted out of Rooiwal.

The company has a chequered past of criminal charges for fraud related to another tender in Rustenburg. It was also flagged by the auditor-general for irregularities two years before it was awarded the R4.6m Usutu Vaal Water Area contract. Yet, when we put questions to the department on what due diligence checks were done before the deal and whether they knew of the company’s record, we were met with a “we had no knowledge” answer.

The answer is simply not good enough. But it further exposes weaknesses and the level of negligence on the part of the officials entrusted with public finances to pursue due diligence in their work. The lesson from Hammanskraal is that this could have dire consequences.