Nkandla only 10th on corruption list

President Jacob Zuma's Nkandla residence in rural KwaZulu-Natal.

President Jacob Zuma's Nkandla residence in rural KwaZulu-Natal.

Published Sep 23, 2015

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Johannesburg - There are corruption cases that are far more serious and pervasive in South Africa than the Nkandla scandal.

This is according to trade union Solidarity, which has released a report detailing 10 corruption scandals that have cost taxpayers millions of rand.

The president’s private residence was placed 10th on the list. Local government, tenderpreneurship, Tshwane prepaid meters, the SAPS, the metro police, the Passenger Rail Agency of SA (Prasa), false qualifications, the Department of Home Affairs, the cabinet and Parliament all out-ranked Nkandla.

The report indicated that South Africa’s 2014 rating in Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index was 44 out of 100. South Africa ranked 67th out of 175 countries.

The 2013 Afrobarometer report on corruption in Africa showed corruption increased considerably in South Africa between 2002 and 2012.

Dr Eugene Brink, senior researcher at the Solidarity Research Institute, said the findings in the report were a drop in the ocean. “It is impossible to quantify the actual extent of corruption in South Africa as much of it takes place unnoticed and unpunished,” he said.

The findings in the report were not all-encompassing “and are merely an indication that corruption is undeniably one of the biggest crises in our country”, Brink added.

The report said: “If left unchecked, corruption erodes public confidence in the country’s institutions as well as investor confidence, poisons the business climate and fosters despair. It menaces the very survival of the state.”

The most corrupt institution was local government. The Auditor-General’s (AG) last findings showed that more than two-thirds of municipalities and over 40 percent of municipal entities had supply chain management irregularities. A total of 22 percent (R60 million) of tenders were made to suppliers where employees and councillors had an interests.

Second on the list was tenderpreneurship, where government employees collude with politically connected people. Nearly 60 percent of municipalities had findings concerning uncompetitive and unfair procurement processes.

A Tshwane prepaid meters tender was also named in the report after the municipality cancelled a tender where R830m had been paid to install 800 000 meters and manage the project for eight years. Only 12 930 meters out of 435 000 had been installed by the time the project was cancelled.

Prasa was listed because of recent revelations of the tender that saw R620m being wasted on unsuitable locomotives. The AG also found that in the 2014/15 financial year, serious misgivings were expressed on expenditure of R3.9 billion.

Prasa racked up irregular expenditure of at least R790m, according to the AG.

Other institutions named were the SAPS, metro police and Home Affairs for regularly taking bribes from the public; the scandals of false qualifications; and the irregular and corrupt practices of some ministers and MPs.

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