A group of prominent civil society organisations, all working in the human rights space in South Africa, have issued a statement decrying US president Donald Trump’s puzzling pronouncements on perceived happenings in the country. These include “confiscating land and treating certain classes of people very badly” – which the organisations have refuted in emphatic terms.
Global anti-corruption movement Transparency International releases its annual Corruption Perceptions Index on Tuesday, 11 February. This edition focuses on how corruption is undermining climate action around the world, showing how the countries most in need of climate finance are facing governance and corruption challenges.
The Special Investigating Unit and the Auditor-General of South Africa briefed the parliamentary standing committee on public accounts on audit outcomes for a handful of municipalities including Johannesburg and Tshwane. At the same meeting, the Special Investigating Committee shared progress and results from various investigations into procurement at the municipalities.
Former National Lotteries Commission (LRC) board chairperson Alfred Nevhutanda asked the State Security Agency to investigate whistle-blowers, writes Raymond Joseph for NGO GroundUp, which has conducted extensive research and investigation into the LRC’s affairs. The outcome of that investigation, however, was probably not what Nevhutanda had hoped.
Corruption Watch will appear in the Constitutional Court on 6 March to challenge the National Assembly’s recent appointment of persons to the Commission on Gender Equality. The organisation contends that the parliamentary committee on women, youth, and people with disabilities failed in its constitutional duty to facilitate meaningful public involvement in the appointment process, and seeks a court order declaring the appointments to be unlawful and invalid, suspended for 18 months to allow for the process to be run again.
The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) has announced its (most corrupt) Person of the Year for 2024. The winner is none other than former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad! He deserves the ‘prize’, having overseen a brutally repressive regime for 24 years and caused a civil war that began in 2011 and is still not over.
It is too early to assess the government of national unity’s success, writes Prof Theo Neethling for The Conversation: Africa. But it is not too early to address certain critical factors which will influence that potential success – in this article Neethling discusses eight important priorities for the new government.
The parliamentary portfolio committee on social development has ordered a thorough investigation into the entire social grants application and payment system. The committee is concerned about the weaknesses exposed in an investigation conducted last year into social relief of distress grants, and wants the same treatment extended to the wider social grant system.
Countries around the world are losing US$492-billion in tax a year because multinational corporations and wealthy individuals are able to use tax havens to avoid or underpay tax. The biggest enablers of such corrupt practices are the UK and the US, and it’s the Global South that is on the losing end of the current state of tax inequality.