Parliament’s Standing Committee on Public Accounts grilled Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa board members and executives, Department of Transport officials, and transport minister Fikile Mbalula for failures at the rail agency. The committee also expressed its anger at the Prasa board’s lack of urgency to move on various important matters.
The gaps in information shared by the government around the procurement of Covid-19 vaccines are a major concern, writes law professor Geo Quinot. Transparency and regulatory compliance are needed to build public trust in the vaccination programme – and public trust is crucial if the programme is to succeed. There is still much we do not know and much we should know, some details that might be forthcoming, and other information that should already be available.
Our big concern with Jova Vaccines Supply is that its director has many directorships, write Karam Singh and Kirsten Pearson. This is a red flag in the sense that no one person can feasibly stretch their time to such an extent and offer a meaningful value-adding service. And we don’t see evidence of sufficient due diligence being done prior to granting the registration of companies or sufficient oversight of shelf companies.
Transparency International’s 2020 Corruption Perceptions Index), released at the end of January 2021, highlights South Africa’s failure to move above 50 points on the index, write David Lewis and Janine Erasmus. The ANC’s unwillingness or inability to tackle corruption and crime in its own ranks is just one factor weighing on perceptions of the country.
Former president Jacob Zuma and his co-accused, French arms company Thales, will finally go on trial for corruption, money laundering and racketeering charges on 17 May. This brings to an end years of slippery evasion and stalling on the part of the two accused, with some assistance from authorities along the way.
In December 2020 CW published its second survey on youth and corruption, with several questions dedicated to their experiences with sextortion. While no extensive data exists to confirm whether sextortion is a problem in South Africa, or how widespread it is, wrote Sabeehah Motala at the time, the country’s endemic gender-based violence problem means it is not unthinkable that the two would interact at some point,.
Corruption Watch’s new interactive open data tool – Veza (a colloquial term for ‘reveal’ or ‘expose’) – equips a wide range of people, from researchers, journalists, activists and communities to the public at large, with the knowledge and insight to demand better and more accountable policing. It also provides an opportunity for the SAPS and other government structures to embrace the concept of open data and public access to information – this will go a long way to restoring public confidence in the vital role that they play in the country.
A new report released this month by Transparency International compares the enforcement of the AU Convention on Preventing and Combating Corruption in 10 countries, including South Africa. The report focuses on four key areas of the convention. and finds that progress on enforcing the AUCPCC’s provisions across Africa is mixed, although most countries have taken important steps in developing their legal frameworks to comply with these four articles.
On 17 February 2021, Corruption Watch will launch the Veza Tool – an interactive and open data website that aims to increase transparency and accountability in the police service. Veza, which, loosely translated, means ‘expose’ or ‘reveal’, is designed to empower communities with mechanisms to combat corruption and break the cycle of impunity in the police service.
Visit our GivenGain R20 for Change page and help us demand transparency in our systems, accountability in our leaders, and better empowerment and protection of whistle-blowers. By donating R20 a month, you’ll be supporting our work with communities across the country, helping them to know and access their rights and reduce the corruption that robs people of resources intended for their benefit.