North West Department of Human Settlements
10 August 2026
• ACTis has raised three flags for the NW DoHS and placed three under monitoring.
• The Department has repeatedly awarded tenders to underqualified or non-performing contractors and has failed to monitor projects and verify that work has been completed. The scale of irregular expenditure and its recurrence over time suggest embedded control weaknesses rather than isolated administrative failures. The absence of consequence management for officials involved in irregular expenditure and procurement breaches is a key enabling condition. Implicated officials and contractors who benefit from procurement failures continue to operate without sanction, weakening deterrence.
• These factors may enable undue influence in procurement and payment systems. The persistence and scale of these dynamics indicate an environment in which corrupt actors can operate with limited institutional constraints, particularly in housing construction projects. Accountability processes are both weakened and redirected, with failures to implement audit findings and attempts to deflect responsibility publicly.
• Maladministration and corruption have contributed to significant failures in housing delivery, with only 33.3% of targets achieved despite 99.8% of the housing development budget being spent in 2024/25. This inefficiency is reflected in persistent underperformance, including more than 5 500 incomplete Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) housing units identified in the province, as well as reports of stalled, abandoned or poorly executed housing projects.