What SA’s experience in the past 20 years teaches us is that to build an effective, corruption-free democracy we need something more than periodic elections, writes our executive director David Lewis. We need active, vigilant, demanding citizens persistently holding their leaders to account.
As the South African Social Security Agency prepares to negotiate a new social grants payment contract with Cash Paymaster Services (CPS), Erin Torkelson unpacks the way CPS parent company Net1 is using the payment system to benefit its subsidiary companies by exploiting vulnerable rantees. A new contract with CPS, therefore, would amount to grievous betrayal of Sassa beneficiaries.
Corruption Watch, following the failure of the South Africa Social Security Agency (Sassa) to find an alternative service provider to deliver social grants, calls for the Minister of Social Development, Bathabile Dlamini to be sacked for her handling of the matter.
Parliament’s Standing Committee on Public Accounts took the South African Social Services Agency (Sassa) to task over its relationship with social grants service provider Cash Paymaster Services, saying the relationship must be investigated. members of the committee also demanded that the agency show Parliament the respect it deserves. (Scopa), Sassa leadership had appeared before the committee to explain the agency’s R1-billion wasteful and irregular expenditure recorded, as well their project plan for the grants rollout post CPS contract.
28 February 2017 The public in South Africa are increasingly intolerant of corruption and the abuse of power by those in positions of leadership and are more willing to hold […]
Corruption Watch released its annual report today – the report shows that the South African public are increasingly intolerant of corruption and the abuse of power by those in positions of leadership and are more willing to hold them to account. “2016 was the year in which South Africans decisively and publicly rejected corruption,” commented David Lewis, the organisation’s executive director.
New research by the Access to Information Network has revealed a shocking dereliction of duties by public and private bodies to realise South Africans’ constitutional right of access to information. Of 369 Paia requests submitted to government by network members between 1 August 2015 to 31 July 2016, 46% of requests were refused and just 34% of requests were granted in full.
In his budget speech, delivered yesterday, Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan toned down the authoritative tone against wasteful government spending that he showed in the previous year, instead highlighting the cost-effective ways in which government has managed the public procurement space, particularly the achievements of the Office of the Chief Procurement Officer.
Sassa’s failure to act means that there is no credible arrangement in place to ensure that social grants will be paid when its court-set deadline expires on 31 March, writes Andries du Toit. Disrupting the payments will cause huge suffering to South Africa’s poorest and most vulnerable people, and the government is missing a valuable opportunity to address the issue of financial inclusion.