This article first appeared on News24.
By Marianne Camerer
It felt like a historic event. On the last Friday morning of August, in the windowless conference room of the Premier Airport Hotel in Johannesburg, anti-corruption advocates in South Africa gathered to witness the close-out event of the National Anti-Corruption Advisory Council (NACAC). After a two-year delay in its establishment and a last-minute change in its terms of reference that were originally to report regularly and transparently to Parliament and not to the presidency, the council had come to share its final recommendations in an 856-page report.
We were gathering to learn what the NACAC had recommended, relative to its mandate, which was:
- to monitor the implementation of the National Anti-Corruption Strategy (NACS).
- to advise on the optimal institutional architecture for effectively fighting corruption
- to review how the Zondo recommendations could align with the NACS
The council’s May 2024 interim report had never been made public and owing to this there was justified scepticism as to whether the final version would be available at the event. It was not. Instead, we were told it had been presented to President Cyril Ramaphosa the day before, when he had described its recommendations as “bold” and “revolutionary”. He had promised to release it publicly, which he later did. The close-out event was therefore a chance to get a glimpse – even if on a PowerPoint presentation– of the council’s final recommendations.
Standing together against corruption
For those of us who have gathered on these issues and remember the first anti-corruption summit hosted in Parliament in 1998, followed by innumerable others, it felt that rather than the usual civil society- vs- government antagonism, the event marked a collective effort. We were on the same page, talking to -rather than past – each other. All of us recognising the urgency of the moment, finally, demonstrating the leadership required for an effective anti-corruption intervention.
Among those present were Adv Vusi Pikoli, former head of the National Prosecuting Authority and special advisor to acting police minister and NACAC chair, Prof Firoz Cachalia, who spoke on the day; Special Investigating Unit (SIU) head Adv Andy Mothibi and head of the Independent Directorate Against Corruption , Adv Andrea Johnson. Civil society was represented by Hennie van Vuuren from Open Secrets, activist Mark Heywood, Ahmed Kathrada Foundation’s Neeshan Bolton, Wayne Duvenage from Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse, Lawson Naidoo from the Council for the Advancement of the South African Constitution and representatives from the Anti-Corruption Coalition, Wits University, Corruption Watch, Institute for Security Studies, Public Affairs Research Institute and the Ethics Institute. The Public Service Commission, the Public Protector’s Office, the Presidency and the departments of justice and public service and administration were also represented.
Bringing hope
NACAC’s councillors – representing multiple sectors – were thanked by Cachalia in his capacity as council chair. The German embassy and GIZ as the main funder of the development of the NACS and NACAC, also received the council’s thanks. Without this critical development assistance, including from the UNODC, we may not have had a NACS nor a NACAC as these partners provided support for the research, consultative processes, and three dialogues that informed the final report. NACAC councillor David Lewis remarked: “we did the best that we could under the circumstances” although there was intentional bureaucratic inertia from various departments – such as justice – and no-shows from others including the South African Police Service who declined to meet with the council.
Modeling a “whole of society” approach, Vaal Generation of Stars, a Sharpeville theatre initiative, put on a moving performance using song and dance. Their final plea was to “blow the whistle” even as Cachalia paid tribute in his remarks to Babita Deokaran, a “symbol of those who have been slaughtered because they stood up.” Only a week later the assassination of insolvency attorney Bouwer van Niekerk occurred in his Saxonwold, Johannesburg office. He had reportedly been working on high-profile fraud and corruption cases.
Cynical, disengaged, fearful and angry citizens who experience the scourge of corruption and feel there is nothing being done, and nothing to be done, and who understandably experience a sense of hopelessness would have been challenged by Friday’s events. There was a palpable sense of unity and clarion call for immediate action on the recommendations. We sang the national anthem and recited the preamble to the Constitution. It was a reminder that as South Africans, united in our diversity, our abusive past and the continuing impunity are the reason why we cannot give up the fight for a future where there is real accountability and no citizen is above the law.
NACAC’s recommendations focus both on preventing systemic corruption AND on strengthening the investigative and enforcement capacity of law enforcement agencies. They dodge the either/or scenario when it comes to recommending a single or multi-agency approach but rather opt for both. This debate is something I wrote about in 1999, in a Public Service Commission series called Fighting Corruption. In my contribution, titled “Tackling the multi-headed dragon – evaluating prospects for a single anti-corruption agency in South Africa”, the dragon referred to a term coined by the SIU – the same body NACAC suggests should morph into a new and permanent Chapter 9 body with a dedicated focus on anti-corruption, to be called the Office of Public integrity. Accordingly, I was happy to see that the report explicitly mentioned the UN’s Jakarta Principles, meant to benchmark the independence required for anti-corruption bodies to be truly effective. This may well take years because institution building is hard. Hollowing out and capturing is easier.
The work must continue Archbishop Desmond Tutu commented in the late 1990s that the gravy train had stopped only long enough for the new government to board it. My 1997 article in the Journal of Financial Crime, titled “South Africa: Derailing the Gravy Train-Controlling Corruption”, picked up on this theme. Another struggle icon Chris Hani voiced his fear that “the liberators emerge as elitists who drive around in Mercedes Benzes and use the resources of this country to live in palaces and to gather riches”. A final reflection by NACAC councillor Nkosana Dolopi, drawing on Hani’s prophecy, was met with a bitter concession that what Hani and Tutu had predicted had indeed come to pass.
But also, that not all was lost. There is a continued and collective commitment and growing outrage at the betrayal of the promise of a better life that a constitutional democracy would – should – deliver. We are less naïve but still hopeful that the arc of justice and accountability is moving in the right direction and that an ethical South Africa is indeed possible.
Camerer is the deputy chair of Corruption Watch and teaches at UCT’s Nelson Mandela School of Public Governance. Her PhD on Corruption and Reform in Democratic South Africa (2009) traced the first wave of anti-corruption efforts.
