On 22 November countries at the UN adopted, by a landslide majority, a resolution to begin the process of establishing a framework convention on tax and completely change how global tax rules are decided. The process was driven by Nigeria and strongly supported by most African countries.
The SIU, Hawks, and NPA met recently with the parliamentary public accounts committee to provide information on the status of investigations into recommendations made by the Zondo commission. Discussions centred mainly on state capture and state-owned enterprises.
Among the public institutions that either failed to submit financial statements on time or at all to the Auditor-General are SAA, Prasa and the NSFAS. It is failures like these, in handling the basic requirements of the Public Finance Management Act, that prompted AG Tsakani Maluleke to call for not just improved performance from public entities, but also enhanced accountability mechanisms from Parliament and provincial legislatures charged with the oversight of public institutions.
Changing our political party system of government may not be possible any time soon, but regulating political parties that occupy Parliament, and ensuring transparency in their campaigning processes, may be a good start, argues academic and political analyst Sithembile Mbete. This is the second of our two-part series highlighting the conversations that happened at the recent state capture conference held in Johannesburg in October.
The theme for the 2024 National and Provincial Elections programme will be Your Democracy, Own It – the programme was launched in November, under the custodianship of the Independent Electoral Commission. The programme “celebrates the fruits of democracy by showcasing different, real-life experiences of young South Africans from all corners of the country”, says the commission.
Farm Worker Equity Schemes, rolled out in the 1990s, were meant to uplift farm workers. But once the government had paid out the grants, writes Corruption Watch’s Melusi Ncala, it failed to monitor implementation of these schemes, and ultimately the only ones who benefited were the already wealthy farmers.
Although losses related to material irregularities ran into the billions again this year, Auditor-General Tsakani Maluleke says her office is making progress in getting public sector accounting entities and officers to acknowledge and address fiduciary failures and subsequent material financial losses.
South Africa’s appetite to fight corruption and state capture should not depend on who is in charge of government’s anti-corruption strategy, but who is on the ground mobilising against the scourge. In this first of two articles, we highlight the call to action made at the recent state capture conference hosted by civil society for South Africans to abandon their class comforts, and fight corruption in the same spirit that they fought against apartheid.
Among South Africa’s numerous problematic government departments and entities, there are institutions of governance that shine, preventing total chaos from prevailing. The Auditor-General of South Africa is undoubtedly one of the latter, and it was recently elected as the official auditors for Unesco for the next five-year term.