King V and the Public Sector: Governance with Ubuntu, integrity, and impact
King V and the Public Sector: Governance with Ubuntu, integrity, and impact
By Cobie van Antwerpen, Partner, Risk Advisory Services, BDO South Africa
With the recent launch of King V, public sector leaders in South Africa have been presented with a rare opportunity to reimagine governance not as a compliance exercise, but as a moral and strategic imperative. King V is more than a revision of its predecessor, rather it is a bold new narrative for ethical leadership, accountability, and sustainable value creation.
For those of us who have spent decades working within and alongside organs of state, the release of King V feels personal. It speaks to the frustrations we’ve long held about governance failures, and the hope we carry for a public sector that truly serves its people.
At the heart of King V lies Ubuntu—the African philosophy that affirms our shared humanity: “I am because we are.” This is not just poetic sentiment. In King V, Ubuntu becomes a governance principle, urging boards and executives to lead with empathy, interconnectedness, and ethical responsibility. In the public sector, this means recognising that every procurement decision, budget allocation, and policy directive affects real lives. It means prioritising social cohesion, stakeholder inclusivity, and long-term sustainability over short-term political wins. Ubuntu challenges us to ask not only “Is this legal?” but “Is this just?”
What King V brings to the table
The Institute of Directors South Africa (IoDSA) describes King V as a simplified, streamlined, and modernised governance framework. It reduces the number of principles from 17 to 12, introduces a modular structure, and provides a standardised disclosure template to improve transparency and comparability.
Key innovations include:
- Integrated Thinking: Recognising the interdependence between the organisation, society, economy, and environment.
- Impact Materiality: Assessing not just how external factors affect performance, but how operations affect communities and ecosystems.
- Digital Governance: Addressing AI, cybersecurity, and data ethics for the first time.
- Proportionality: Allowing governance practices to be scaled based on organisational complexity.
- Ethical and Effective Leadership: Emphasising integrity, fairness, and transparency as core leadership traits.
Responding to governance audit findings
For many public sector entities, audit findings from the Auditor-General of South Africa (AGSA) have become a recurring challenge. Irregular expenditure, weak internal controls, and poor performance management continue to plague SOE’s, departments and municipalities. King V offers a structured and values-based approach to address these issues:
Strengthening accountability
King V’s “apply and explain” model requires entities to justify their governance practices, not just report them. This aligns with AGSA’s emphasis on consequence management and proactive accountability
Enhancing disclosure discipline
The new disclosure template will standardise reporting, helping boards identify gaps, track improvements, and respond to audit findings with clarity and consistency.
Embedding ethical leadership
Audit failures often stem from poor leadership. King V reinforces the role of boards in setting ethical tone, overseeing risk, and ensuring governance is not compromised by political or personal interests. However, through reinforcing the role of boards, accountability of executive leadership and officials of the state, must remain key as per the requirements of both PFMA and MFMA.
Aligning internal audit with strategy
It is imperative that internal audit in the public sector must evolve. It must align with strategic goals, test actual operations, and understand the legislative frameworks within which entities operate. King V supports this shift by encouraging integrated assurance and strategic risk oversight.
Governance with heart: A personal reflection
Having served as a CFO in a provincial department and now leading public sector advisory at BDO South Africa, I’ve seen both the promise and the pain of governance up close. I have lived and breathed the efforts made by boards to drive accountability, transparency and effective, efficient service delivery – where success have been achieved, however, also where efforts were paper based only and led to poor service delivery. What I’ve learned and what I say often is this: governance is not a checklist—it’s a commitment. Clean Audits should not be the goal – Clean Governance should.
Too many powerful and well-remunerated people in our public sector are letting South Africans down by failing to achieve the strategic objectives of the entities they manage. Clean governance must be embedded across every aspect of operations—from supply chain to performance management, from internal audit to board oversight. King V gives us the tools. But it’s up to us to use them with courage and integrity.
Concluding, King V is not a silver bullet. It cannot legislate morality or guarantee unqualified audits. But it provides a framework for ethical decision-making, a language for accountability, and a vision for governance that uplifts rather than exploits. As public sector leaders, we must embrace King V not just as a code, but as a commitment to doing the right thing always. Guided by Ubuntu, let us build institutions that serve with honour, humility, and heart.