By Fr Stanslaus Muyebe
There have been discussions about strengthening anti-corruption institutions, including bringing back a Scorpion-like institution to fight corruption.
This is not enough. There is a also a need to attend to the ethical root cause of corruption – greed.
Moral regeneration should introduce a national conversation on greed and how it manifests through private sector and public sector corruption.
South Africa has a strong legislative framework in response to corruption. The implementation gap is often attributed to the lack of political will, which has its roots in greed and political expediency.
South Africa has signed a never-ending list of international anti-corruption agreements and protocols.
There should be no reason corruption is as big of a problem as it is. Yet, according to Corruption Watch’s 2019 Analysis of Corruption Trends report, 8.4% of the complaints they received nationally that year involved the embezzlement of funds and theft of resources within the education sector. The police accounted for 9.2% of complaints, followed by municipalities (6.4%), and health centres (3.4%).
The political will to implement the anti-corruption legislation will not be a reality until we address the culture of corruption and narrow-vested interests based on royalty to political factions.
At the root of corruption is the culture of greed, the spirit of accumulating wealth at any cost and without limits. It has permeated every sector of society, including the business, religious and political sector. Greed has been normalised, reproduced and institutionalised.
The spirit of greed has hardened itself into the social structure that we use to relate to politically and economically. We have been led to believe that greed is good for our economy and politics. The national conversation about greed should interrogate this assumption.
Where political systems and institutions are grounded on the culture of greed, political positions are considered to be an opportunity for self-enrichment, and not public service. The electoral system and political deployment to public positions are then organised around self-enrichment of the few elite and for the benefit of a political faction. The pursuit of the common good is compromised.
At its onset, the objectives of the configurations of electoral system and political deployment could have been noble. Where greed has entered into the systems, such objectives have been sidelined.
There is, therefore, a need to change the electoral system and the practice of political deployments to public positions. There is a need to base the hiring and firing processes on 150% merit, qualifications, experience, competencies, moral character, and commitment to make this country a better place.
A conversation about greed should also integrate a discussion about positive ethical values that are counter-measures to greed. In particular, there should be a conversation about the values of sharing, social solidarity and accountability.
The spirit of accountability is a critical counter-measure to the spirit of greed and the culture of impunity around corruption.
Imprisonment of high-level politicians, and not only low-level government officials, is the one that will send a strong message to the society that greed does not pay.
Stanslaus Muyebe is a priest from the Dominican Order.
The Star