Posts

Working with young minds for change

By Janine Erasmus Final year law student Zola Valashiya is a man with a vision – and that is to get South Africans not just talking to, but communicating with each other. He feels that this is one of the tools that will help us to tackle a particularly prevalent scourge in our society – Read more >

Department learns corruption lessons

Corruption Watch recently met representatives of the Free State department of basic education in Bloemfontein to discuss the organisation's work to stop corruption in schools in the province. In the past year, following the launch of its schools-focused campaign, Corruption Watch has received hundreds of reports containing allegations of corruption in public schools from all Read more >

Help make our voice count!

A Corruption Watch idea, involving online citizen activism against corruption, is one of 196 that have made it through to the public voting round in the annual Making All Voices Count global innovation competition. Check it out here and vote for our idea – there are two weeks left! South Africa is one of 12 countries Read more >

CPI 2013 – South Africa in the African context

Transparency International (TI) has launched its annual corruption perceptions index, and South Africa has not improved noticeably on its score of 43 and ranking of 69 for 2012. Last year the country dropped two places on the sub-Saharan Africa rankings, from seven to nine, and this year it drops another place to 10. The index Read more >

Thin blue line broken

By Kavisha Pillay The Global Corruption Barometer, released by Transparency International (TI) in July, revealed that South Africans viewed the police service as the most corrupt institution in the country. A staggering 83 percent of respondents had this perception of the police, and of the 74 percent of respondents who came into contact with a police official Read more >

Weighing in on public service clean-up bill

Corruption Watch recently made submissions on the Public Administration Management Bill, calling for an outright ban on civil servants doing business with the state, a cooling off period when an individual moves from the public to private sector, and prohibiting re-employment within the state if an individual is fired for corruption-related misconduct. The draft law, Read more >

Corruption Watch exposé leads to suspensions

By Zaheer Cassim Three officials at Dr JS Moroka municipality near Witbank in Mpumalanga have been suspended after a Corruption Watch investigation exposed some very dodgy spending by procurement clerks employed by the municipality. Corruption Watch was alerted to the case when the accounting officer at a private company, who had been involved in supplying Read more >

Problems in North West

Municipalities in North West were hailed by the province’s leadership towards the end of 2012 for meeting auditor-general (AG) Terence Nombembe’s deadline for submitting their financial statements for that year – but what was not revealed at the time was that the achievement came with a R29-million bill for taxpayers. On Wednesday, Mail & Guardian Read more >

Metro cops on the spot again

Every day, street traders in Johannesburg are expected to pay bribes to the police: if they don’t pay up, their stock is confiscated and they are ticketed. After they pay the fines, the hawkers find that not all of their stock is returned; most of it is still missing. Last week, on Behind the Headlines Read more >