Corruption is a programme of the elite to steal from the poor and a cancer that must be eradicated before it is too late, Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi said at the National Anti-Corruption Forum conference in Sandton on Thursday.
Corruption buster Willie Hofmeyr was equally blunt.
“We all have to take corruption a lot more seriously if we want to beat it,” said Hofmeyr, the head of the Asset Forfeiture Unit. “Certain people are getting stinking rich, and they are doing it at the expense of the poor.”
Peter Goss, from PwC, said the forum was “one of the most ineffectual bodies” he’d been involved in.
“What’s missing at the core is a collective strategy owned by all role-players.”
A key topic at the conference is the need for an independent centralised anti-corruption unit.
What’s independent?
“It means that when you are investigating someone powerful, they don’t have the power to remove you,” said Hofmeyr. “It’s probably the most effective way of dealing with it.”
There are numerous institutions whose job includes tackling corruption – Hofmeyr listed 11 – and plenty of laws, but co-ordination was crucial.
“There’s no effective co-ordination of what we’re doing or the way we are doing it,” said Hofmeyr.
He said the recently set-up Multi-Agency Working Group and Anti Corruption Task Team (ACTT) had done quite a lot; these focus on the government.
The government’s target is to convict 100 corrupt people who have taken at least R5m each – and to get back the money – in three years.
Hofmeyr said the ACTT, set up in June last year, had dealt with 26 cases and frozen R570m. But Hofmeyr is looking for more targets.
“Any volunteers?” he joked.
“The laws and policies are not bad. The problem is that people break these with impunity and nothing happens to them, and their colleagues see that nothing happens.”
Lawson Naidoo pointed out the need for action on the March Constitutional Court judgment in the Glenister vs President case around the dissolution of the Scorpions and the creation of the Hawks.
This judgment found the Hawks unconstitutional because the unit is not sufficiently independent, but gave the government 18 months to sort out the problem. It has not yet been done. It’s that judgment that is likely to drive the creation of a new co-ordinating unit.
Vavi
said: “We face the nightmare future of a South Africa up for auction to the highest bidder… where no one will be able to do business with the state without going through corrupt gatekeepers.”
Cosatu was setting up a Corruption Watch, to take reports of corruption but protect whistleblowers, Vavi added.
Naren Bhojaram, president of the Consulting Engineers of SA, said that despite the many documents and a lot of PowerPoint presentations in Africa, countries were moving backwards in terms of business integrity.
“After 10 years, what has been achieved?” he asked. “As a country, we need leadership, and leadership on business integrity starts at the top.”
Some 127 908 calls to the national anti-corruption hotline can’t be investigated because departments don’t have the capacity.
The country was “screaming for leadership, especially of a moral nature” one delegate said. - The Star