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.
Parliament has announced that next week, on 8 and 9 February 2022, its joint standing committee on intelligence (JSCI) will interview the 10 shortlisted candidates vying for the position of inspector-general of intelligence. As it has done with previous important leadership appointment, Corruption Watch has urged the committee overseeing the process to ensure it is as fair and transparent as possible.
In the Constitutional Court today, the Women’s Legal Centre Trust is amicus in a matter dealing with an Equality Court ruling that the allocation of police human resources in the Western Cape unfairly discriminates against black and poor people based on race and poverty. The Equality Court did not provide a remedy to its finding of discrimination and the applicants will ask the court to compel the police leadership to address this issue, with a deadline included.
Towards the end of last year, Good Governance Africa released the latest version of its Governance Performance Index. We reported earlier this year on the results for municipalities, and we now highlight the performance of the country’s eight metropolitan municipalities and, in brief, the background thereto.
While South Africa might not be able to fix its state-owned enterprises overnight, write Lulama Qabaka and Leon van Vuuren of The Ethics Institute, a good starting point would be the formation of strong and independent governance structures. This first step can be done through nomination committees comprising government and non-government representatives. Importantly, this function does not have to reside within the governing party.
Acting Chief Justice Raymond Zondo has found that the South African Revenue Service (Sars) was systemically and deliberately weakened, chiefly through the restructuring of its institutional capacity, strategic appointments and dismissals of key individuals, and a pervasive culture of fear and bullying. This was achieved by collusion between former president Jacob Zuma, former Sars commissioner Tom Moyane, and consulting firm Bain & Co.