South Africa’s print media is not doing enough to equip people with the tools to understand and fight corruption, writes Vanessa Malila. By providing people with relevant information, it can assist them to participate in topics around public processes. This will ensure that citizens are informed enough to fulfil their roles as drivers of democracy, and to hold their government to account.
A new report released by Transparency International shows that despite much fanfare three years ago on the adoption of beneficial ownership principles, the G20 has not made much progress in turning its talk into action. The majority of G20 countries still do not know who owns and controls shell companies and trusts in their territories because of inadequate beneficial ownership legal frameworks.
Meet the five finalists in the first edition of South Africa’s Integrity Idols initiative. Like its predecessors, Integrity Idol South Africa aims to inspire a national movement to honour, encourage and connect honest civil servants, using positive reinforcement.
While South Africa has a long legacy of access to information thanks to the age of its law, says Odac in its recently releases report on the state of access to information in Africa, its implementation of the law has been inconsistent and weak. However, the recent establishment of the Office of the Information Regulator is a significant development that should be consistently and enthusiastically monitored.
Some say that the cryptocurrency and blockchain technologies are potential tools in the fight against corruption, primarily because all transactions are recorded and their details may not be altered, thereby creating a trail. Others say they lend themselves to corruption because of the anonymity factor. Neither view is absolutely correct nor incorrect and the truth, says Transparency International, lies somewhere in between.
Both grand and petty corruption are prevalent in the South African police Service, said Corruption Watch yesterday in a parliamentary submission before the portfolio committee on policing. In both instances, the appropriate sanctioning of perpetrators is required if this conduct is to be deterred.
This absorbing longform article from the New York Times does not reveal much that South Africans do not know already about the Free State Vrede dairy farm corruption scandal. However, it puts the disgraceful episode, its players, and its back story into sharp perspective.
This four-part series on how we can get more people engaged in fighting corruption was written by Transparency International’s social accountability coordinator Mahmoud Farag. The series is aimed not only at organisations working in the social justice arena, but is of immense benefit to anyone wanting to increase their participation in the fight against corruption.
Everyone knows House of Cards as ‘the’ Netflix show about corruption, but over the last few years, the popular streaming service has produced several high-quality TV shows with different flavours of corruption at the heart of their story lines. We look at these corruption-focused shows.