The financial position of 28% of South Africa’s municipalities is so dire that there is significant doubt whether they will be able to continue operating as a going concern in the near future – this was revealed in the 2020-21 municipal audit outcomes report, tabled earlier today in Parliament by Auditor-General Tsakani Maluleke. The gains made in some areas are negated by the overall grim picture.
The fifth and final instalment of the Zondo commission’s report is due to be handed to the Presidency on 15 May. In the meantime, here is a brief summary of the first four parts, and the entities and persons implicated.
The Special Investigating Unit, National Prosecuting Authority, and Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation recently faced a grilling from members of Parliament’s Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs portfolio committee. The three agencies were there to answer for the slow progression of Covid-19-related corruption cases.
Corruption Watch welcomes the arrest in Dubai of Atul and Rajesh Gupta. The pair are two of the three brothers who fled South Africa after their benefactor, former president Jacob Zuma, was removed from office in February 2018. The two are now to be extradited to South Africa to face charges of money laundering and fraud. The third brother, Ajay, remains a free man, for now.
Following the long-awaited arrests in Dubai of Atul and Rajesh, two of the three Gupta brothers, the process of extraditing them has now begun. The brothers, who face charges of money laundering and fraud, won’t be back in South Africa for a while yet, warns the National Prosecuting Authority, as extradition is long and complex.
During the last decade, Russia has expanded its interests and presence in Africa. With sanctions and other measures imposed on Russian elites because of the war in Ukraine, the African continent could, as a result, end up in one of two possible scenarios. Either Russian operations in Africa could scale down because of decreased funding – or the Russian footprint in Africa could increase.
The US is now the world’s secrecy capital, according to the 2022 Financial Secrecy Index, released on 16 May by the Tax Justice Network. African countries, on the other hand, for the most part managed to improve their financial transparency standing, although South Africa was one of the four out of 18 assessed which did not.
Corruption in African urban development can lead to dysfunctional infrastructure that does not meet public needs, writes UTC’s Laura Nkula-Wenz. It also hardwires injustice into city systems for decades to come. To counter this type of corruption, legal reforms of outdated planning laws, public service reforms, and greater transparency in procurement processes will be necessary, as will individual behaviour change.
The South African police is staffed by people who come from the very communities where their friends and loved ones live, writes Corruption Watch’s Melusi Ncala – yet they perpetrate acts of brutality and gross abuse of power against those same communities. “We cannot continue as usual – soliciting and paying bribes and believing that brutal actions will rid us from our social problems.”