“Let’s stop being so polite.” This was the refrain from the usually diplomatic and measured Paul Pretorius SC during his keynote address to the state capture commission workshop hosted by the Council for the Advancement of the South African Constitution (Casac) and the Public Affairs Research Institute (Pari) last week. Pretorius, evidence leader at the Zondo inquiry and now a consultant with the National Prosecuting Authority’s Investigating Directorate (ID), was exasperated at the slow implementation of Zondo’s recommendations and other interventions necessary to combat corruption in its new guises.
“Too little, too slow,” he lamented. Corruption, Pretorius emphasised, is evolving as we speak, with often violent criminal syndicates proliferating in many parts of the government and across sectors. Not to mention the new frontiers of organised crime — illegal mining, extraction syndicates, assassinations and extortion/kidnapping, and sabotage of public infrastructure. Law enforcement lags behind these operations: we need to urgently capacitate our law enforcement agencies to get a step ahead.
As the public protector Kholeka Gcaleka noted in her address to the workshop, we need to reform the systems that enable corruption, from questions of how to build a professional public service, to how we resource our oversight and anti-corruption institutions.
The NPA’s lack of administrative independence is hampering it. It needs its own accounting officer and to secure its budget directly via a vote from parliament, not through the department of justice. The national director of public prosecutions (NDPP) should have greater involvement in appointments of senior NPA officials. We should respond to these basic institutional requirements as a matter of urgency. Indeed Casac proposed that these amendments should have been incorporated when the NPA Amendment Bill was being considered by parliament last year.
Even if the full gamut of Zondo recommendations were implemented, this would not be enough to combat the evolving nature of corruption. “We cannot prosecute our way out of corruption,” the NDPP, Shamila Batohi, said in a Freedom Under Law lecture last week. Pretorius emphasised that there are no easy corruption cases to prosecute — in addition to the higher evidentiary burden of “beyond reasonable doubt”, these are complex cases in which the accused will “lawyer-up” to drag cases out. Prosecution cannot be our only weapon to tackle corruption and state capture.
When a government is afflicted by corruption, we tend to put the blame on people for 80% and on structure for 20%. But we’ve probably got the proportions reversed
— Christopher Stone
In August 2022, President Cyril Ramaphosa appointed a national anti-corruption advisory council (Nacac) to advise on implementing the national anti-corruption strategy and establishing a strengthened anti-corruption system. Nacac’s mid-term report was submitted in March, making proposals for South Africa’s future anti-corruption architecture. Nine months later, there has been no formal response from the president.
While the report has not been publicly released, the Nacac chair, Firoz Cachalia, speaking at the state capture commission workshop, offered a glimpse into its contents: it proposes an office on public integrity (OPI) as an independent, chapter 9 anti-corruption institution to address systemic corruption through a combination of prevention and enforcement capacities. This focus on the systemic nature of corruption is welcomed and should be actioned. This OPI would integrate the existing Special Investigating Unit into its operations, and work in close collaboration with the Hawks and the ID.
The corruption we’ve seen grip our state-owned enterprises is not simply the result of a cynical greedy elite. It is enabled by the design and capacities of our state administration, by sophisticated criminal networks, and by the nature of our wider political economy. We require a response that understands the complex and systemic nature of corruption.
“When a government is afflicted by corruption, we tend to put the blame on people for 80% and on structure for 20%. But we’ve probably got the proportions reversed,” says Christopher Stone from Oxford’s Blavatnik School of Government, who has studied South Africa’s corruption for many years.
To address this, civil society must continue to mobilise for state accountability and the state-building project. For example, to advance the procurement system into one that works for officials, that drives the economy’s transformation and that is substantially open to public scrutiny. Justice Raymond Zondo, in his report to the Presidency, dedicated substantial space to procurement reform. Enhanced transparency provisions have been included in South Africa’s new legislation for public procurement — the Public Procurement Act. As Zukiswa Kota from the Public Service Accountability Monitor noted at the workshop, civil society must use these provisions to push for enhanced transparency infrastructures — including integrated digital systems and better public procurement data.
While digital technology is no silver bullet, there are some encouraging projects under way to evolve the state’s integrity management systems. The Presidency has developed a centralised register of people who have been dismissed from organs of state or who have resigned to avoid being disciplined — allowing prospective employers to check whether an ID number corresponds with one linked to a dismissal or dubious resignation. There is much room to expand these kinds of initiatives, though it will mean head-on action to make the state’s information technology agency, Sita, fit-for-purpose.
To take up Pretorius’s plea, civil society must sharpen its focus to demand urgent institutional strengthening to counter corruption and move towards a state that serves the public good, strengthening our democratic foundations.
• Naidoo is executive secretary at Casac and Meny-Gibert is the head of the state reform programme at Pari
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