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- Eastern Cape departments did not pay 4,096 invoices worth R291.8 million within 30 days, representing 17.2% of all invoices processed in March 2026.
- Health and Transport accounted for more than 94% of all late invoices, and almost 74% of their total value.
- The DA will refer the recurring failures in Health and Transport to SCOPA, and demand that their accounting officers account for the lack of effective consequence management.
The Eastern Cape cannot afford a government that destroys jobs with one hand while claiming to create them with on the other.
Official unemployment in the province has surged to 47.5%, the highest in South Africa, while the Eastern Cape has shed 116,000 jobs in just one year.
Against this backdrop, provincial government should be doing everything in its power to keep businesses operating, protect existing jobs, and create an environment in which companies can grow. Instead, it is withholding hundreds of millions of rand from businesses that have already delivered goods and services to the state.
That is why the Democratic Alliance (DA) will refer the recurring failures in Health and Transport to the Standing Committee of Public Accounts (SCOPA), requesting that the committee call the respective accounting officers and CFOs to account for the ongoing failures.
In response to parliamentary questions from the DA, Premier Oscar Mabuyane revealed that provincial departments did not pay 4,096 invoices, worth R291.8 million, within 30 days in March 2026.
The Department of Health was by far the worst offender, failing to pay 2,340 invoices worth R161.9 million on time. Almost 48% of all invoices processed by the department were paid after 30 days.
Transport followed, with 1,518 invoices worth R53.8 million paid late, representing 35.3% of all invoices it processed.
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For a small business operating on tight margins, an unpaid government invoice can mean the difference between paying salaries and retrenching workers, meeting obligations and taking on debt, or surviving and closing its doors.
The Premier himself acknowledges that delayed payments can result in business closures, job losses, and the withdrawal of services. Yet government has never undertaken a formal assessment to determine how much damage its own payment failures have caused.
Perhaps most damning is the explanation offered for why these failures persist.
The Premier relies on a research study conducted in the 2019/20 financial year to explain current payment failures. That six-year-old study identified poor budget management, spending without available budgets, procurement planning failures, weak coordination between officials, manual invoice tracking, and delays in confirming goods and services received.
The Premier cannot still be relying on a six-year-old report to explain why departments are failing to pay suppliers today.
Either those findings are now outdated, in which case government should have conducted a new assessment, or the same problems remain unresolved six years later. If they do, it means provincial government has known about these failures for years and has still failed to fix them.
The DA will request SCOPA to require both departments to table time-bound remedial plans to bring payment cycles under control, provide a full record of financial misconduct proceedings instituted over persistent late payments, and explain where no consequence management has taken place.
The departments must also provide detailed information on the suppliers and businesses affected and report regularly to the committee until they can demonstrate sustained compliance with the 30-day payment requirement.
Paying a business for work already completed is not a favour. It is one of the most basic obligations of a competent government, and is the only way we will get the Eastern Cape working for all its people.