Ahead of Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana’s maiden national budget speech tomorrow, the Budget Justice Coalition has urged the minister to prioritise inclusive growth and job creation, as well as a movement away from austerity budgeting. The coalition strongly believes that economic recovery and a pro-poor budget can co-exist.
Corruption Watch and several other Transparency International chapters have written an open letter to the heads of delegations of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), which is currently holding plenary and working group meetings in Paris. The letter urges FATF to speedily implement publicly accessible beneficial ownership registers across the globe, as this will help to clamp down on anonymous companies, illicit financial flows, and money laundering.
Despite ongoing queries – since 2018 – around the appointment of Karoo Hoogland municipal manager Jan Fortuin, questions remain unanswered. Corruption Watch recently reached out to the municipality for clarification, to no avail.
If the job of taking action is placed solely on the shoulders of government, the commission’s work is bound to have been in vain, write Richard Chelin and Craig Moffat. And given South Africa’s poor record on implementing the advice of commissions, this is where business and civil society must pitch in.
The Constitutional Court has ruled that there’s no reason for Cash Paymaster Services to delay providing documents on its expenses and income from its social grants contract, writes Tania Broughton for GroundUp. The court had previously held that CPS may not benefit from its unlawful contract with Sassa and ordered the company to file audited statements. CPS‘s liquidators went to court to try to postpone filing the statements but the apex court ruled that statements must be provided without further delay.
South Africa has no shortage of solutions to its corruption challenges, write Corruption Watch’s Karam Singh and Tharin Pillay. However, it has a serious lack of political will to implement the numerous recommendations and changes needed to fight the scourge – and the window of opportunity for action won’t stay open forever.
On 10 February 2022 President Cyril Ramaphosa delivered his fifth State of the Nation address – one that some analysts say was big on ambitious plans but lacking in details. Read the full text here.
To have a meaningful impact on how your municipality is run, you need to understand the processes involved. The Department of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs is calling for active citizen participation in local government, and has published a short guide on some of the more important municipal structures.
Because the ongoing impeachment proceedings against Public Protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane are primarily about accountability, Corruption Watch and the Council for the Advancement of the South African Constitution joined as amici. In the latest judgment, handed down on Friday 4 February 2022 by the Constitutional Court, the bench commended the two organisations for their submissions.