Address by Zwelinzima Vavi, on his appointment as
Chairperson of the National Anti-Corruption Forum
10 December 2012
Program Director Prof Divya Sing
Deputy Minister of Public Service and Administration, Ayanda
Dlodlo
Chairperson of this august institution Dr Mathew Phosa
Vice chancellor and principal of UNISA, Prof Makhanya
Regional representative of the UNODC, Mr Mandiaye Niang
Chairperson of the Public Service Commission, Mr. Ben
Mthembu
Colleagues in the National Anti Corruption Forum
The community of the UNISA
Ladies and gentlemen
It is an exceptional honour for me to be here today to
accept my election as Chairperson of such an important body.
I thank all those who have supported me and I promise to do
everything in my power to advance our aims and objectives.
I want from the onset acknowledge the sterling contribution
of the outgoing chairperson of the NCAF, Futhi Mtoba. She
has made an important contribution in the struggle to defeat
the scourge of corruption in our country. This contribution
was not limited to chairing our collective effort as the
NACF but she has also played a critical role as the
President of BUSA. During her tenure at BUSA, she ensured
that the business community highlighted the need for ethical
behaviour by business in its dealings with government and in
its dealings with society at large. For this we salute you
Futhi Mtoba as you step down as the chair of the NCAF. I
will rely on your wisdom and experience as the new chair.
It is appropriate that we are holding our summit just one
day after World Anti-Corruption Day, which commemorates the
signing of the United Nations Convention Against Corruption
on 9 December 2003.
The fight to defeat corruption is one we cannot afford to
lose. The old meaning of the word is “the process of decay
and putrefaction” of a formerly living organism. If
corruption is not defeated it will indeed mean the decay and
ultimately the death of the living body of our democracy.
For some, it is a matter of life and death, as people are
being literally killed for exposing and preventing
corruption.
The modern sense of ‘corruption’ is defined as the
“dishonest or fraudulent conduct by those in power,
typically involving bribery, or the action or effect of
making someone or something morally depraved.”
So it covers not just financial transactions, such as
bribery, tender-abuse or the theft of public funds, but also
other immoral conduct, such as human trafficking, sexual
abuse of learners by teachers, or the torture of suspects by
police. All such conduct, if not checked, threatens to
destroy the foundations of our democracy.
One of the biggest difficulties we face however is that
while everyone – government, business, labour, civil
society, all political parties and religious denominations -
are unanimous and vehement in condemning corruption in
principle, none of us are doing enough to turn principles
into action on the ground.
Last year the NACF itself committed us to a 12-point Plan of
Action, to recommit ourselves to anti-corruption initiatives
and programmes aimed at realising an agreed National
Anti-Corruption Strategy and develop a comprehensive
education, awareness and communication campaign to promote
an ethical culture, develop an improved understanding of the
many facets of corruption, and the contributions being made
to combat this scourge.
The ANC resolved at Polokwane in 2007 that it must provide
leadership to society as a whole in the fight against
corruption, and that South Africa should continue to promote
its anti-corruption values and interests in continental and
international structures.
The problem is however that despite all our fine
resolutions, the problem remains endemic. In Transparency
International’s corruption perception index for 2012 South
Africa now ranks 69th out of 176 countries. We have fallen
31 places since 2001 when we were 38th out of 91 countries.
This index measures perceived levels of corruption in the
public sector, bribery, the abuse of public resources,
secrecy in decision making, anti-corruption laws and
conflicts of interest in respect of government officials.
While this is a survey only of ‘perceptions’, there is
plenty of evidence to suggest that the perceptions are based
on reality. As my comrade David Lewis, the executive
director of Corruption Watch, says: “the results are not
surprising, as the survey echoes what we hear in the
thousands of reports from ordinary people confronting
corruption daily".
Fellow delegates
Only last week, six people were arrested for defrauding the
Buffalo City municipality in the Eastern Cape, of R11.8
million.
The former head of the Special Investigating Unit (SIU),
Willie Hofmeyr, has estimated that the government loses up
to R30bn to corruption every year. The SIU told the City
Press last December that it currently had almost 1 000
individual investigations under way. Almost 600 of these
relate to procurement, and involve contracts worth more than
R9 billion.
The unit is investigating 360 conflicts of interest on
contracts, valued at R3.5 billion. It suggests that up to
20% of government’s procurement budget was being lost to
corruption – and therefore lost to delivery.
The Auditor-General (AG), Terence Nombembe’s, latest audit
report for 2011/2012 painted a grim picture of rampant
incompetence, maladministration and waste of public money.
It gave clean audits to only 5% of municipalities. Not one
of the metropolitan councils - and no councils at all in the
Eastern Cape, Free State, Gauteng, Northern Cape and North
West - had clean audits.
Even more worrying is the AG’s finding found that at least
R11 billion was incurred by municipalities in unauthorised,
irregular, fruitless and wasteful expenditure, nearly double
the R6bn in 2009-10.
The consolidated provincial figures in the AG’s report also
revealed that R1.15 billion worth of contracts had been
altered and extended without apparent reasons and contracts
worth R658 million were awarded without competitive bids.
Councillors, municipal officials and their family members
pocketed R814m from illegal municipal deals and were not
brought to book.
He identified a key reason for these problems as the “lack
of consequences for poor performance and transgression”. In
other words, those responsible are getting away with it.
No-one is being held to account. There are absolutely no
consequences!
Significantly he points out that 72% of supply chain
management contraventions - such as unfair bid processes,
unsigned contracts where money is paid to suppliers, and
unexplained contract extensions - were only identified when
the his own staff audited the municipal books. Nobody in the
municipalities themselves seemed to have noticed, or did
notice but were either implicated or afraid to speak out.
The theft of such huge sums of money helps to explain why we
see so many angry and often violent service-delivery
protests in our poorest communities. Residents believe,
rightly or sometimes wrongly, that money budgeted for
schools, houses, clinics, running water, sewers and roads is
not being used for these purposes but siphoned off into the
pockets of greedy, corrupt councillors and their
co-conspirators in service-delivery firms.
The AG’s findings are echoed in those of the Public Service
Commission (PSC), which revealed the shocking statistic that
the cost of financial misconduct to the state in 2010-11 was
R932m, up from R346m in 2009-10 and R100m in 2008-09.
In 2010-11, 838 senior officials were charged with financial
misconduct, compared with 689 and 652 in the previous two
years. This report leads us to one of the critical problems
– that in 2010-11 20% of senior managers in the Department
of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs 19% in
the Department of Transport and 17% in the Department of
Public Works had interests in private firms.
That is why we should fully support the PSC’s call that
public servants should be banned altogether from doing
business with the government. They must choose either to
serve the public or to go into private business but never
the two at the same time. The same rule should apply to
union and civil society leaders
I agree with PSC director-general, Professor Richard Levin,
that it is not sufficient for public servants to be allowed
to do business with the government provided that they
declare their interests, which, as he says, is often not
complied with or enforced.
As the Professor said: how can these officials possibly do
their work for the state when they were involved in so many
outside activities? I also support his proposal for
lifestyle audits of key staff, and audits into employees’
indebtedness.
Like the AG, he referred to the "culture of no consequences"
in the public service which allows corruption to flourish;
and he argued, rightly, that in the absence of a total
prohibition on doing business with the government, offending
heads of departments and senior managers should at least be
charged with misconduct for failing to disclose conflicts of
interest.
And, notwithstanding the constitutional right to equality
before the law and the principle of innocence until proven
guilty, why do ministers accused of serious offences not
follow their consciences and voluntarily resign while the
charges are investigated, rather than sit and wait until
they are dismissed; this happens in many other countries?
I hope the government will act without delay on the PSC
recommendations. There must be a zero-tolerance approach.
But it is no less urgent to crack down on those in private
business who collaborate in the corrupt misappropriation of
public funds. We must never forget that for every public
official who accepts a bribe, there is a business person who
gives it.
We must change the mindset of those running our public
bodies and re-establish a culture of public service, under
which public representatives either serve the people
honestly and efficiently, or resign and make way for others
who will do so.
Fellow delegates
We need an urgent national debate on how we are going to
turn round this disaster. The fundamental challenge is how
to enforce the laws and bring those responsible to book. We
are good at identifying the problems and formulating strong
anti-corruption policies but then do far too little to
implement them, and arrest and punish the culprits.
For instance the ANC’s 2009 manifesto said we "will step up
measures to ensure politicians do not tamper with the
adjudication of tenders; that the process of the tendering
system is transparent; as well as ensuring much stronger
accountability of public servants involved in the tendering
process", but the reports from the AG and PSC show that we
are not enforcing such measures.
The Department of Public Service has developed guidelines
for a cooling-off period of one year after a public servant
leaves the public service before they can have an interest
in businesses, which they formerly dealt with. I believe it
should be five years, but wish that we could at least
enforce even the weak one-year period.
We also clearly need to review the apartheid-era ministerial
handbook so that it is based on our ethos of selflessness
and not a licence for perks and luxuries. The former
Minister of Public Service was instructed to review the
handbook but we are still waiting for action on this.
Fellow delegates
Finally we must do much more to encourage and defend the
whistle-blowers who are risking their jobs and even their
lives to expose corruption. The recent conviction of the
murderers of North West ANC councillor, Moss Phakoe, exposed
the lengths that corrupt councillors will go to, up to and
including murder, to cover up their crimes and silence those
who blow the whistle.
How can we tolerate the spectacle we have witnessed recently
of people demonstrating outside courtrooms in defence of
someone accused of corruption, or even murder?
Some corrupt politicians and officials build political
support by bribing people to back their factions, which are
no longer based on ideological differences but on who has
the biggest treasure chest to dole out favours. Leadership
contestation is changing from being about the battle of
ideas into battles for control of the public purse-strings.
We also must make absolutely certain that the Protection of
State Information Bill will never be used to silence or
punish whistle-blowers who expose evidence of corruption and
crime, which is classified as secret.
Corruption is wreaking untold damage on the moral fibre of
the nation. If we do not have the political will to deal
with this collapse in morality within society and cannot
resolve this crisis no one will take us seriously when we
say we are opposed to corruption. That is the challenge
facing the NACF and South Africa.
The biggest challenge we face today is that too many South
Africans have become cynical. They have stopped believing
that we are serious about our public declaration that we
will want to stop the scourge of corruption. To be honest it
has become extremely difficult to counter the high levels of
pessimism in our country. Every day we read new scandals
involving the very leadership that should inspire our
people.
My pledge as a chair is to develop a new sense of
partnership - a new people-based campaign that must involve
ordinary people to wage a relentless war against corruption
irrespective of who is involved. This campaign must mobilize
every worker in government, every manager and more
importantly every leader of government, business and civil
society.
Every one of us must communicate a message that must be
believed, that says - not every government worker, manager
and government leader is corrupt. Not very business and
leader of the unions and civil society is a crook.
We must demonstrate that the overwhelming majority are
honest hard working whose contributions to build a better
life is overshadowed by the few rotten potatoes who are
however growing more powerful and who now through killings,
factional politics that build a high wall of psychopaths
that stand ready to defend the corrupt leaders.
As long as we are seen to be too scared and unwilling to
challenge the growing power of the few who continue to
damage the image of political organisations, business
formations, civil society formations and more worryingly
government, all of them will continue to be discredited.
This task requires not just unity and new determination, but
serious consistent action and resources.
Patrick Craven (National Spokesperson)
Congress of South African Trade Unions
110 Jorissen Cnr Simmonds Street
Braamfontein
2017
Tel: +27 11 339-4911 or Direct: +27 10 219-1339
Mobile: +27 82 821 7456
E-Mail:
patrick@cosatu.org.za
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