Why isn’t Ramaphosa winning the war on corruption?

Adecade ago Karam Singh, the new head of Corruption Watch, quit the state-run Special Investigating Unit (SIU) in frustration at how the fight against corruption had run aground.

"It was a few years into the Jacob Zuma administration, and while they made lots of noises about fighting corruption, including signing SIU proclamations, many of the reports we filed went nowhere," he says.

Singh had helped set up new investigations at the SIU, an institution that, while weakened, was never captured. In 2019, after a series of other roles, he took over as head of legal at Corruption Watch. Then in December, when David Lewis retired, Singh was propelled to the top job at the organisation that is at the inflection point of SA’s battle against corruption.

It shouldn’t have been like this, of course. After all, when Cyril Ramaphosa triumphed at the ANC elective conference in December 2017, he said "corruption must be fought with the same intensity and purpose that we fight poverty, unemployment and inequality".

The party would "act fearlessly" against the "abuse of office", he vowed.

Only, four years later, the sun still hasn’t risen on this "new dawn".

This week, the Berlin-based think-tank Transparency International published its annual "corruption perceptions index". The bad news is that SA’s score hasn’t really budged from where it was in 2015, the year Zuma axed Nhlanhla Nene to install the alleged Gupta puppet David Des van Rooyen as finance minister.

The new index shows SA ranks 70th out of 180 countries, with 44 points out of 100 (countries are scored from zero, which is highly corrupt, to 100, which is very clean). Yet this was the same score SA got in 2015, and one less than the 46 points the country got in 2016.

In Sub-Saharan Africa, SA is now eighth (see graphic on page 24). In this region the best- performing country is the Seychelles (23rd overall, on 70 points), followed by Cape Verde, Botswana, Mauritius, Rwanda, Namibia, São Tomé and Príncipe, and then SA.

In the global context, SA isn’t awful. More than two-thirds of the 180 countries scored less than 50, with Venezuela (14 points), Somalia (13 points), Syria and South Sudan (11 points) at the bottom of the table.

But SA is also far from the top countries, Denmark, Finland and New Zealand, which scored 88 points — and it has ground to a standstill.

The sad reality is that Ramaphosa’s stirring words at Nasrec in 2017 seem to have made not a jot of difference. It’s extremely disheartening, says Singh.

"People want to know: how bad is corruption in SA? Is it a reliable place to invest? We want to be positive, but if we’re honest, there’s still a massive vulnerability," he says. "After Jacob Zuma left the scene, this new administration was given a window of opportunity which has not been used — despite sound efforts to rebuild key captured institutions with new leadership at the SA Revenue Service, the police, and the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA)."

Economically, too, the country is all the poorer for the inertia.

Thabi Leoka, an economist who runs Naha Investments, says that had Ramaphosa cracked down on corruption in his first four years as he’d pledged, the economy would be in a far less fragile place.

"His early campaign speeches were about putting guys in orange overalls, and it was on this basis that the investment community backed him as a reformer. This was why the rand and bond market strengthened when he was appointed. But it hasn’t happened, and we’ve lost out on investment because of that," she says.

There are numerous examples of companies that have pulled their cash from municipalities that have either been run into the ground, or where politicians have eaten the money meant for services.

Last July, dairy group Clover said it would shut down SA’s largest cheese factory in Lichtenburg in the North West because of "ongoing poor service delivery" around water and power, shifting production to KwaZulu-Natal. That factory employed 300 people.

"The loss of jobs can be traced directly to corruption," says Leoka. "If Ramaphosa’s administration had taken a harder line on corruption from the beginning, we wouldn’t have had a PPE [personal protective equipment] scandal. Instead, we saw ministers flouting Covid regulations, which tells you the man in charge wasn’t cracking the whip."

Party before country

So why hasn’t Ramaphosa grasped the nettle? The rhetoric after he was appointed was certainly right. (It must be said, though, that Zuma also said the right things, even if he was doing precisely the opposite behind closed doors.)

Early on, Ramaphosa did make progress in overhauling leadership at the most compromised organisations, Singh tells the FM.

"But since then we’ve stagnated," he says. "The fact that we’re four years into the ‘new dawn’, and we’re dealing with new scandals — this time from those close to the president — has led to tremendous disillusionment."

It suggests that corruption isn’t necessarily linked to any particular leader, or faction of the ruling party; rather, he argues, it may have now become endemic to the country.

"When I was at the SIU a decade ago, the discussion was whether corruption had become endemic to our society, where there was the potential for corruption in every major transaction. At the time, the sense was that it wasn’t — but today, I’m not so sure that’s still the case," Singh says.

Many others share precisely this concern.

Lawson Naidoo, the executive head of the Council for the Advancement of the SA Constitution, tells the FM the culture of cutting corners has become so embedded in the public sector that whatever Ramaphosa says, officials don’t fear being found out, or being held accountable.

"There are so many ‘investigations’ after the fact, and no prosecutions. People believe, rightly, that you can get away with it, so it has bred a culture of impunity. And it’s made worse by the fact that there’s so little focus on prevention beforehand," he says.

But if you want one single reason for SA’s glacial progress, you need look no further than the governing ANC.

Ever since former chief whip Tony Yengeni was convicted for fraud relating to the arms deal in 2003, the ANC’s resolve for tackling corruption has been crumbling. It was why the party torpedoed the only effective crime-fighting organisation SA ever had, the Scorpions (conviction rate: between 82% and 93%). And it’s why, when politicians such as Ace Magashule are hauled to court, throngs of party stalwarts turn out to "support" them.

One person who has a keen sense of the culture of the governing party is Mavuso Msimang. A man who was part of the ANC’s armed wing during apartheid, and the former head of SA Tourism, Msimang was chair of Corruption Watch until December. As you’d expect, he has a crisp answer for why Ramaphosa is failing to win the war against corruption.

"There’s a very simple answer. It is that the president’s blind commitment to so-called ‘party unity’ is what is costing him this fight. Some of those he still works closely with, in his own circle, are among the corrupt. And no action has been taken against them by the party, let alone by agencies like the Hawks," Msimang says.

Instead, there are "timid measures" that are barely enforced, he says — like the ANC’s "step aside" resolution, which, in theory, requires those facing criminal charges for serious corruption to step down. Even then, ANC secretary-general Magashule fought this rule tooth and nail, before ultimately being suspended by the party.

Leoka points out that there is an additional complication for Ramaphosa, which almost obliges him to tread softly, and pay extra heed to party dynamics.

"In SA, the president isn’t elected by the country; he’s elected by the party," she says. "So even if the country kicks and screams, his biggest consideration is whether the party is happy. To stay in power, he has to appease them, and that’s the main problem."

Some analysts hope that perhaps, after being elected a second time in December this year, Ramaphosa may feel freed to act more decisively.

That’s just a fallacy, says Leoka.

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"Recent history tells us the second term is when presidents do the least. It’s a difficult time because that’s when contestation starts for your replacement, and actually, since 1994, we’ve never had a president finish his second term. If you unsettle the party in your second term, you’re removed."

This is why she believes a policy of appeasement in a president’s first term, followed by a gung-ho approach in the second, is a nonstarter.

But there is another reason why Ramaphosa’s vow to put crooks behind bars has fallen flat.

Msimang explains: "The fact is, the security forces meant to police corruption are themselves often corrupt, or occupied by incompetents. As it is, the minister of police isn’t speaking to the commissioner of police — and one of them must go, so that policing doesn’t collapse. It is the president who must make that decision."

This reality became bracingly clear in July, when the police quaked on the sidelines as 161 malls and warehouses were looted, live on national television. In the end, 337 people died in what Ramaphosa said was a "deliberate, co-ordinated and well-planned attack".

Yet today, six months later, none of the "masterminds" has been arrested, let alone convicted. The police, the experts say, are simply out of their depth.

"Capacity in the law enforcement agencies is really low," says Msimang. "Many people left during the Zuma era, and I don’t know how long it’ll take to build this up again, but it’s tremendously sad. The authorities seem surprised at just about everything."

Not just perceptions …

While Msimang’s criticism of the police is entirely apt, there are many who’ll argue, in defence of Ramaphosa, that patching up a leaking vessel takes time. And anyway, when it comes to the Transparency International index, they’ll say, rightly, that this simply collates the "perceptions" of those interviewed, mostly executives and experts.

Singh concedes this point.

"Look, this is a limitation. And you could argue that because SA is quite a transparent society — much came out during the Zondo commission, for example — this contributed towards the perception in a way it wouldn’t have, were we a country with far less disclosure," he says.

Nonetheless, he says, these perceptions are still a reliable indicator of a trend over a longer period. Were the country decisively tackling municipal misspending, for example, this would positively affect perceptions. "So, it tells us that while we may be more transparent, we are worse than many others in demanding accountability," he says.

Critically, however, there is other empirical evidence to consider. The fact is, there are other sources that underscore the gloomy picture sketched by the Transparency International report.

Foremost is the Global Corruption Barometer (GCB), also released by Transparency International, which collates people’s actual experiences of corruption.

In the 2019 GCB, 18% of South Africans reported having paid a bribe to a public institution over the preceding 12 months — more than doubling from 2015.

In all, 19% of respondents admitted to bribing a policeman; 14% had bribed someone in a public school; and, perhaps most tragically, 6% had bribed someone in a public clinic — presumably to get service they wouldn’t have got otherwise.

And, even though this survey took place months after Ramaphosa had taken charge, 64% of people believed corruption had got worse in the previous 12 months.

Equally, Afrobarometer last year interviewed 1,600 South Africans, of whom 56% believed "most or all" of the police force were corrupt, while 51% believed local government councillors were equally dishonest.

Jan Hofmeyr, from the Institute for Justice & Reconciliation, who assisted in the Afrobarometer survey, says people’s personal experience are a "concerning indicator of just how rife corruption actually is."

He says there’s no sense that anything is improving: "It has been very damaging that many of the recent issues revolved around people seen as close to the president — in particular, around [former health minister] Zweli Mkhize and the president’s spokesperson, Khusela Diko."

Those cases include:

• Mkhize, who "resigned" in August 2021, after the SIU found he had helped Digital Vibes, a company linked to his family, score a R150m communications tender from his department. The SIU found his conduct, at best "improper", and at worst, "unlawful".
• Diko stepped aside in 2020 after her husband’s interests in a company called Royal Bhaca, which scored R125m worth of PPE contracts at vastly inflated prices, emerged. Though unconnected to that tender, Diko was given a warning for failing to disclose all her interests, and is now employed elsewhere in government.
• Zizi Kodwa, Ramaphosa’s deputy minister for state security, was fingered at the Zondo commission for receiving almost R2m in payments from a former executive at technology company EOH, which scored billions in state contracts.
• Gwede Mantashe, the ANC’s current chair, received R600,000 worth of upgrades to his house from crooked services company Bosasa between 2013 and 2015, before he was first appointed minister of mineral resources in 2018. Mantashe said he hadn’t known Bosasa had footed the bill, and that his "friend", Bosasa executive Papa Leshabane, was just making a "contribution", as you would in a family.

Hofmeyr’s explanation for why Ramaphosa has failed to act with more urgency chimes with that of both Msimang and Singh.

"It’s a far deeper institutional crisis," he says. "We’ve got a constitution with all the checks and balances, but we’ve never really used it as intended to ensure accountability and proper oversight. There are many reasons — cadre deployment has played a role, as well as officials being too lenient when it comes to applying their mandate."

Party unity, again, is prioritised.

One glaring example is former correctional services commissioner Arthur Fraser, who "unlawfully" decided to release Jacob Zuma from jail in September — just two months into his 15-month sentence for contempt of court — on bogus "medical grounds".

Msimang says this illustrates how people are bending the rules all around Ramaphosa, and he’s simply watching it happen.

"He was also given grounds to act against Magashule on a platter, but he delayed. And he needn’t have done so himself because, of the [110] people on the ANC’s NEC [national executive committee], he had the support of the majority. Why did no-one else say anything, when this handful of RET [radical economic transformation] supporters was allowed to beat their drum on social media?" he asks.

And when his own ministers send out mixed messages about fighting corruption, Ramaphosa treats them with kid gloves. Lindiwe Sisulu, for example, who attacked the constitution as "neoliberal with foreign inspiration" and attacked black judges who make "rulings against their own", was still serving as his tourism minister when the FM went to print. (On Sisulu, Msimang says Ramaphosa is "playing the long game".)

Nor has there been any consequence for others.

Says Msimang: "Mantashe seems to think it’s OK to take gifts, and claim he didn’t ask for them. Now, there are people whom Zondo says must be investigated, and yet Gwede comes and argues that ‘we mustn’t use the Zondo commission to settle scores’. To have people like that still in leadership positions makes the entire fight against corruption seem quite hopeless."

A lost cause?

"Hopeless" is a word used frequently by those who spoke to the FM for this article — a manifestation of their frustration at the glacial progress.

But is this really a lost cause? After all, other countries in seemingly intractable positions (like Singapore before 1959, and Hong Kong before 1974) have successfully reversed corruption in their societies.

"Well, it is discouraging, but you can’t really give up," says Msimang. "There are things that can be done — for example, if good lawyers were to take on cases of national interest pro bono, this would help. And if business were to set up a fund to finance this, it may help."

Singh still holds out hope — and Transparency International has specific proposals for jump-starting the process. These include ensuring greater information about government spending; overhauling the tender system; and creating an independent anti-corruption agency and supreme audit body.

"The principles for fixing our public procurement system were laid out in the national anti-corruption strategy, which was developed in November 2020 but never executed," he says. "But a start would be to create a real independent anti-corruption agency."

In other words, SA needs a new version of the Scorpions. During its eight-year lifespan, that agency claimed the scalps of Yengeni, former Regal Bank boss Jeff Levenstein, Zuma’s financial adviser Schabir Shaik and police chief Jackie Selebi, among others.

But the ANC, in a craven moment indicative of its fraying moral fibre, voted to dismantle the Scorpions in 2009 and replace it with the Hawks — a hapless agency that has proved to be a far from adequate proxy.

Paul Hoffman, a senior counsel who heads nonprofit Accountability Now, has for years been calling for the creation of a new "Scorpions on steroids".

"The Scorpions had an Achilles heel: it was too easy to close them down," he says. "The unit was formed by an amendment to the NPA Act, rather than amending the constitution, so all it took was a simple parliamentary majority to dissolve it.

"The investigative staff were sent to the police, where their anti-corruption work died of natural causes, and the prosecutors went to the NPA, which was hollowed out during state capture."

Hoffman believes a Scorpions 2.0 could insulate itself from interference by being created under chapter 9 of the constitution, impervious to the whims of venal politicians. It would be a multidisciplinary agency, with the power to investigate and prosecute big corruption cases.

"You can leave the cool-drinks-for-the-cops cases to the Hawks, and leave the NPA to do whatever they do. But you must have an independent corruption unit, since corruption-busters can’t be looking over their shoulders wondering if they’ll be fired for going after the big fish," he says.

Ramaphosa clearly understands the need for this, since it was he who created the Investigating Directorate (ID) within the NPA in March 2019, with a mandate to tackle the weighty corruption cases around state capture. Two months later, he appointed Hermione Cronje, a highly rated prosecutor, to head the ID.

Only, in December, Cronje quit — three years early. Insiders spoke frequently of Cronje’s frustration at the lack of resources, and treacle-like bureaucracy, which delayed corruption cases coming to court.

In any case, Hoffman says, the ID isn’t the optimal solution. "For one thing, it just doesn’t have enough resources. While the Scorpions had more than 500 people, for example, the directorate only [has] 100 of [its] own staff," he says.

In August 2020, it seemed as if the ANC had finally seen the light. Justice minister Ronald Lamola said at the time that "it’s clear, as a country, we need a permanent structure" that is truly independent to fight corruption. Critically, though, Lamola didn’t commit to timelines, and said the discussion was "ongoing".

Since then: not a peep.

However, acting chief justice Raymond Zondo’s first report into state capture, released three weeks ago, has revived the idea. In it, Zondo calls for "the establishment of a single, multifunctional, properly resourced and independent anti-corruption authority".

This appears to tick the boxes for the sort of Scorpions 2.0 model that Hoffman favours, one free from the meddling of compromised politicians. You could take the best people from the SIU, the Hawks, the NPA and the Financial Intelligence Centre and mould them into a single crack unit.

As Singh points out, it’s a model that would be international best practice, and one which helped Hong Kong reverse its corruption problem in the 1970s.

Any Scorpions 2.0 may still fail, of course — though it has a greater chance of success than SA’s current haphazard crime-fighting apparatus. But it’s vital because, as much as some people — including veterans on ANC chat groups — bemoan that this is "as bad as it can get", it most certainly isn’t.

"If you’re looking for an upside to the Transparency International report, it’s that we could be in a worse situation," says Singh.

"If you look globally, the more authoritarian countries are experiencing greater corruption than SA. We have a widely respected constitution, an independent judiciary and a free press — we need to build on these pillars, not get rid of them, as Lindiwe Sisulu seems to want," he says.

But each day this doesn’t happen, it erodes the belief that SA will ever be able to tame this monster.

One obstacle to the president taking firm steps is that he must give priority to his party over the country, or face being recalled

—  What it means: