Fifteen of South Africa’s most prominent civil society organisations, including the Ahmed Kathrada Foundation, Defend Our Democracy, SECTION27, Corruption Watch, and the Desmond and Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation, have slammed Sports Minister Gayton McKenzie’s recent xenophobic comments. Read their statement here.
South Africa’s immense natural resources make it an attractive target for IWT and other forms of organised crime. A new report, titled Dissecting the Environmental-Financial Crime Nexus: A Spotlight on the Illegal Wildlife Trade, discusses the financial aspects of environmental crime, and contributing factors such as corruption and weak regulatory enforcement, in South Africa and elsewhere.
Lack of clear accountability, inconsistencies in consequence management, and an executive accountability framework that is still a work in progress nearly three years after the first report of the Gauteng Ethics Advisory Council. This is the state of ethics and risk management and counter-corruption work in the province of Gauteng.
There is nothing wrong with reflection on experiences and challenges among countries facing similar challenges with corruption, writes Moepeng Talane for CW Voices, but it’s important to highlight the positives too. Talking about the wins, no matter how small, is both encouraging and helpful.
Advocate Andy Mothibi of South Africa’s Special Investigating Unit is the new chairperson of the Association of Heads of Anti-Corruption Agencies in Commonwealth Africa. For the next year Mothibi will chair the association, which works to unite member countries in the fight against corruption, through sharing experience and expertise and strengthening cross-border collaboration.
The 2025 World Press Freedom Index, released in early May 2025 by Reporters Without Borders, shows the decline in media freedom in many parts of the world. This is worrying not only because there are negative implications for human rights-related matters, but also because corruption operates best when the media is not allowed to act as a watchdog.
The impact of artificial intelligence (AI) in media work and for press freedom was the theme of the 2025 World Press Freedom Day, commemorated on 3 May. Discussions on the day focused on the benefits and the risks of using AI, keeping the non-negotiable principle of human rights always in view.
Public sector anti-corruption initiatives must take into account that it’s not only standard operating procedures, manuals, and codes of conduct that matter, but also the unwritten informal rules that control and shape behaviour behind the scenes. This is the view of the Corruption, Justice and Literacy Program which, in a recent report, aims to address a burning question – “Why have decades of efforts to address civil service corruption yielded little lasting change?”
The Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Leadership (Cogta) is reviewing the 1998 White Paper on Local Government to evaluate its impact, tackle challenges, and align local governance with modern realities. Accordingly, the department invites the public, civil society, public institutions, interested stakeholders, and all three spheres of government to provide comments on any aspect of local government – even beyond the specific topics outlined in the discussion document. The deadline is 30 June 2025.