Is fighting corruption in South Africa a political, economic, legal or even a reputational issue for President Cyril Ramaphosa’s government?
Transparency International (TI’s) latest Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) 2023, launched a fortnight ago, should indeed make uneasy reading for Pretoria especially at a time when Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana is working flat out to get the country off the Anti-Money Laundering and Combating the Financing of Terrorism (AML/CFT) Grey List of the FATF (Financial Action Task Force), the intergovernmental organisation mandated to develop policies to combat money laundering and terrorism financing, hopefully by 2025.
South Africa’s ranking on the index slipped two places to 83 out of the 180 countries, and its CPI score similarly slipped to 41 in 2023 compared with 43 in 2022. A country's rank is its position relative to the other countries in the index, albeit ranks can change merely if the number of countries included in the index changes.
A more accurate measurement perhaps is a country’s score, which is the perceived level of public sector corruption on a scale of 0–100, where 0 means highly corrupt and 100 means very clean. The lower the score the greater the propensity and perception of corruption.
Put simply, the CPI is the most widely used global corruption ranking in the world. It measures how corrupt each country’s public sector is perceived to be, according to experts and businesspeople, based on a fairly robust methodology, albeit it remains a subjective exercise in that data is based on “perceptions”.
In a regional context, Botswana is the least corrupt SADC country with a score of 59 and a ranking of 39. To be fair to Pretoria, South Africa fares much better than its two African peer economies, Egypt with a score of 35 and a ranking of 108, and Nigeria with a score of 25 and a ranking of 145. Somalia is ranked as the most corrupt country of the 180 surveyed, preceded by Venezuela, Syria and South Sudan.
As South Africa heads to a general election on May 29, fighting and eradicating the scourge of corruption will feature strongly in the manifestos and electioneering of the manifold registered parties.
What is curious in the past few weeks is the diverging ways the phenomenon of corruption and policies to eradicate it has been confronted and articulated by Ramaphosa and Godongwana. Whereas the president alluded to “corruption” 10 times in his State of the Nation Address (Sona) earlier this month, the finance minister merely alluded to it once, almost in passing, in his Budget speech on Wednesday.
“Government,” confirmed Godongwana, “is also prioritising fighting crime and corruption with a focus on enhancing law enforcement agencies. A total of R765 billion is allocated to the peace and security cluster. He also allocated R628 million to the Department of Justice and Constitutional Development for the implementation of the FATF and State Capture Commission recommendations bringing the total funding to these efforts to R2.3bn. In contrast, Ramaphosa’s Sona stocktake on the state of corruption in South Africa was as predictable as it was catch-all. The narrative was classic ANC speak – this is what we inherited, this is what we have done and achieved, but “there is much more work to be done to eradicate corruption completely”.
There is hardly any cathartic soul searching as to why Africa’s oldest liberation movement, the ANC – with its proud history of the Struggle against colonialism and apartheid – should in a space of a mere decade from 2009 onwards in its nascent democracy, have so comprehensively succumbed to wanton state capture, corruption and cronyism.
Ramaphosa’a riposte in Sona was explicit: “In the past year, we have come together with social partners to end load shedding, address the challenges in the logistics sector, tackle crime and corruption, and accelerate job creation. We have restored the independence and capability of our law enforcement agencies to tackle corruption and crime. We will continue to strengthen our law enforcement institutions, tackle gender-based violence and fight corruption to make South Africa a safe place for all.”
Ramaphosa’s anti-corruption drive is so steeped in anomalies and ambivalence, touching some members of his own staff and the president’s own financial affairs, that they often get lost in translation and to some extent insulated by South Africa’s unique liberation backstory. ‘“South Africa has an ESG Relevance Score of '5’ for Political Stability and Rights, and for the Rule of Law, Institutional and Regulatory Quality and Control of Corruption,” noted Fitch Ratings in its January commentary on South Africa.
“These scores reflect the high weight that the World Bank Governance Indicators (WBGI) have in our proprietary Sovereign Rating Model. South Africa has a medium WBGI ranking at 46.7 reflecting a strong level of rights for participation in the political process, moderate institutional capacity, established rule of law and a moderate level of corruption.”
South Africans may be bemused to see their country classified as one with a “moderate level of corruption”. The irony is that in TI’s CPI the best score South Africa recorded was 45 during the halcyon days of Zuma’s state capture in 2016, before flattening to 44 during Ramaphosa’a first two years in office and culminating in its worst score of 41 in 2023. The mind boggles as to any explanation – a flawed methodology or survey sample?
The 2023 CPI shows that corruption is a universal phenomenon and is thriving across the world, with both authoritarian and democratic leaders undermining justice.
The global trend of weakening justice systems is reducing accountability for public officials, which allows corruption to thrive.
But some of the biggest enablers of corruption are the advanced democracies (high-ranking CPI countries) which have an impunity problem of their own, and are not reflected in their scores.
“Many cross-border corruption cases”, warns the CPI report, “have involved companies from top-scoring countries that resort to bribery when doing business abroad. Others have implicated professionals who sell secrecy or otherwise enable foreign corrupt officials. And yet, top-scoring countries often fail to go after perpetrators of transnational corruption and their enablers.”
This, adds Transparency International, is increasing impunity for corruption, and even encouraging it by eliminating consequences for criminals.
Corrupt acts like bribery and abuse of power are also infiltrating many courts and other justice institutions across the globe. Where corruption is the norm, vulnerable people have restricted access to justice while the rich and powerful capture whole justice systems, at the expense of the common good.
* Parker is an economist and writer based in London.
Cape Times