The South African Post Office has received an unqualified audit opinion for the first time in six years — and the same audit report warns it may not survive.

The auditor-general found that the Post Office’s consolidated and separate financial statements for the year to 31 March 2026 fairly present its financial position, performance and cash flows in accordance with international financial reporting standards and the Public Finance Management Act. But attached to that opinion is a material uncertainty relating to going concern. The year before, the auditor-general was unable to express an opinion at all.

The reasons the auditor-general gave are already well known: falling demand for traditional postal services, pressure on revenue generation, dependence on government funding to maintain liquidity, uncertainty over renewal of the exclusive postal licence, ageing infrastructure and legacy systems, and limited access to external financing.

The announcement — issued jointly on behalf of acting CEO Fathima Gany and joint business rescue practitioners Anoosh Rooplal and Juanito Damons — states plainly that the outcome should not be read as meaning the recovery is complete.

An unqualified opinion is not the same thing as a clean audit. It simply means the auditor-general is satisfied the statements are not materially misstated. On its own it says nothing about whether the entity complied with legislation or reported honestly on its performance — the two areas in which the Post Office has failed repeatedly. In 2023/2024, the auditor-general reported R152-million in fruitless and wasteful expenditure and an absence of consequence management.

Monday’s statement contains no financial figures at all — no revenue, no loss, no cash position, no accumulated deficit.

Monopoly terminated

Unaudited numbers for the year were published in June by the rescue practitioners when they asked the high court to end the rescue: revenue up R2-million to R1.54-billion, a net loss narrowed to R71-million from R514-million, and a swing to a positive net asset value of R840-million from negative R7.9-billion, after creditor debt was cut from roughly R8.7-billion to R440-million.

The R3.8-billion still has not been allocated by national treasury, and it’s not clear it is ever coming. The rescue plan adopted by creditors in December 2023 was built on a R6.2-billion government commitment, of which only R2.4-billion was ever paid. Gany told TechCentral in July that the balance is not optional: “That’s the stress point, because it has to come.” An application for the next medium-term expenditure cycle sits with national treasury.

The practitioners’ application to declare the rescue plan substantially implemented, filed in the Pretoria high court on 12 June, has drawn opposition over an outstanding 18c in the rand owed to statutory creditors. Gany has warned a contested application could run for six months.

The licence risk the auditor-general flagged is partly government’s own work. Communications minister Solly Malatsi gazetted amendments to the Postal Services Act in December that removed the Post Office’s monopoly on sub-1kg parcel deliveries, a move the chair of parliament’s communications committee, Khusela Diko, called a direct threat to the entity’s sustainability. — © 2026 NewsCentral Media