New campaign to safeguard SA’s asylum-seekers

PRESS RELEASE: SIBANTU BANYE/WE ARE ONE PEOPLE: WORLD REFUGEE DAY CELEBRATION People’s Coalition Against Xenophobia launches actions to safeguard asylum-seekers in South Africa ahead of World Refugee Day Weekend event starts advocacy effort to protect asylum-seeker rights and pledge campaign to fight xenophobia 2016-06-16 JOHANNESBURG – On the eve of World Refugee Day (20 June), Read more >

Cleaning up political party funding

South Africa holds local government elections in just under two months. Our new three-part series looks at political party funding and the implications of disclosure or non-disclosure of private funding. Part one examines the results of a 2015 global study focusing on the transparency and effectiveness of political finance regimes. In part two we republish Read more >

How open are SA’s official statistics?

South Africa recently joined the likes of Burkina Faso, Kenya and Ghana in developing and launching an open data portal that makes published government data accessible for free to the public. The South African Data Portal is one of South Africa’s commitments in the Open Government Partnership, and is currently in a year-long pilot phase. Read more >

Corruption and Poaching: The Tusk at Hand

By Maurice Oniango and Andrew Ochieng First published by Journalists for Transparency Kenya, South Africa and Tanzania are waging a war on poaching, but one of the greatest challenges to winning it is corruption among the people fighting it. Secretive criminal syndicates pay off police, judges and customs officials to keep their lucrative trade moving. Read more >

Correspondence with public protector ad hoc committee

At the end of May, once we knew who would be serving on the ad hoc committee to oversee the public protector appointment, we wrote to the committee expressing our support, and making a request or two. Committee chairperson Makhosi Khoza sent us a cordial reply, saying that our interest was appreciated, and that the Read more >

Who will fill Thuli Madonsela’s shoes?

By Kavisha Pillay, project manager, Bua Mzansi campaign If staff at the Office of the Public Protector had their way, a high court judge would be their new boss, according to a survey by civil society organisation Corruption Watch. This is the view of most of the staff working with Public Protector Thuli Madonsela, whose Read more >

Upcoming vacancy: public protector

The ad hoc committee established to nominate a candidate for the position of public protector would like to inform South Africans that the advertisement calling for nominations or applications for the post is now available. South Africans are reminded to take note of the closing time and date, which is 16h00 on 24 June 2016, Read more >

Makwetu: improved MFMA audit results for 2014/2015

For the first time in the history of the province, a Free State municipality has achieved a clean audit. This is one of the facts that came out of the latest local government audit report, presented by auditor-general Kimi Makwetu on Wednesday. Thabo Mofutsanyana District Municipality shares its status with 53 other municipalities that impressed Read more >

PP candidates’ names to be published

The ad hoc committee established to nominate a person for the appointment of public protector has agreed to publish names of people that would have been nominated or applied to serve as the new public protector, said Parliament yesterday in a statement. Committee chairperson Dr Makhosi Khoza said publishing the names of nominees or applicants Read more >