New offensive in war on the palm-greasers

The soon-to-be-established anti-corruption bureau will target businessmen who lure public servants into "unholy alliances", Public Service and Administration Minister Lindiwe Sisulu said yesterday.

Briefing parliament's public service and administration portfolio committee, Sisulu said the bureau would be based on a model used by the Tanzanian government.

A presidential proclamation would be issued at the end of the month to disband the department's special anti-corruption unit and establish the bureau.

It would eventually become a fully fledged agency in terms of the Public Administration and Management Bill, which is expected to be tabled in parliament at the end of this month.

National, provincial, and local government departments would, under the new law, be able to refer corruption cases to the bureau.

Sisulu said the establishment of a single anti-corruption agency would not encroach on the powers and independence of other spheres of government, but would encourage them to refer corruption matters to the bureau.

"We're not going to force ourselves on them . local government doesn't have the capacity to deal with corruption . we have huge problems at this level [of government] and they don't know what to do with them," she said.

The bureau would start operating on an "incremental basis" and the department would not be using a "big-bang approach".

This was partly because the bureau first needed to prove itself to the government and citizens.

When the bureau is up and running next month, it will operate on a R17-million budget.

But MPs complained that the figure was minuscule compared to the billions stolen from public coffers and lost through mismanagement.

Sisulu said she would ask the Treasury for more funding and would talk to the private sector, which she blamed for the huge scale of corruption in government.

"I'm very concerned about the corrupters ... because only they have the financial muscle to corrupt my people," she said.

If the Public Administration and Management Bill is enacted, companies involved in corruption would be blacklisted, and employees found guilty of syphoning off public money would face jail time.

"We're going to make sure there are mandatory sentences for all those people found to have corrupted our public servants."

The bureau would work with the auditor-general and the Public Service Commission, and refer criminal cases to the police.

Sisulu said the Hawks and the Special Investigating Unit had already seconded people to the bureau.