20 September 2026
The ANC Study Group on Communications and Digital Technologies welcomes the unqualified audit opinion issued by the Auditor-General to the South African Post Office (SAPO) for the financial year ended 31 March 2026. It is the first unqualified opinion the Post Office has received in six years, and it is an improvement on the prior year, in which no audit opinion was issued.
An unqualified opinion means that the Auditor-General is satisfied that SAPO’s financial statements fairly present its financial position and performance. For an entity that has been in business rescue since July 2023, that is a meaningful change. Parliament, National Treasury, creditors and prospective partners can now work from figures that have been independently tested. The Acting Chief Executive Officer, Ms Fathima Gany, put the point well in stating that governance “does not wait for recovery; it is part of the recovery”, and the Study Group agrees.
The audit outcome sits alongside an improvement in performance. SAPO reported a net loss of R71 million for 2025/26, against R514 million in the prior year, which is its lowest loss in 13 years. The business rescue practitioners have reported that the entity’s net asset value moved from a negative R7,9 billion to a positive R840 million over the rescue period.
The Department of Communications and Digital Technologies has correctly distinguished between the clean audits achieved by Sentech, the Film and Publication Board and NEMISA, and the unqualified opinion achieved by SAPO. SAPO has itself referred to fewer audit findings, which means findings remain. The next milestone is a clean audit, and it depends on those remaining findings being closed out.The Auditor-General has also drawn attention to a material uncertainty about SAPO’s ability to continue as a going concern, citing declining demand for traditional postal services, pressure on revenue, reliance on government funding for liquidity, ageing infrastructure and uncertainty over the renewal of SAPO’s exclusive postal licence. An unqualified opinion speaks to the reliability of the financial statements. It is not a finding that the entity is sustainable.That sustainability now depends on the shareholder. The business rescue plan was built on an initial allocation of R2,4 billion, used for creditor payments, retrenchment costs and operating cash flow, and a second tranche of R3,8 billion for growth and modernisation. The second tranche lapsed. The practitioners, in applying to the High Court in June 2026 to bring business rescue to an end, stated that the next phase requires shareholder-led intervention and an injection of capital. A recovery secured through governance cannot be completed through governance alone.
The Study Group also records the cost at which this stability was bought. More than 4,000 workers lost their jobs and 366 branches were closed during the business rescue. The communities that lost those branches, many of them rural and township communities, have a direct interest in the remaining network being used to expand, and not further reduce, access to postal, logistics and government services.
The Study Group commends the Board, the business rescue practitioners, management and staff of SAPO for the discipline this outcome required, much of it under conditions of severe financial constraint. The Study Group will continue to support the Post Office’s recovery and to hold the Executive to account for the resources that recovery still requires.
Issued by the ANC Study Group on Communications and Digital Technologies
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