SA needs more than one anti-corruption agency, says ISS

A single anti-corruption agency is a high-risk option for South Africa, according to the latest research by the Institute for Security Studies (ISS).

The research showed that unless informed by local conditions and complexities, anti-corruption reforms could trigger political instability.

While some campaigners propose a single anti-corruption agency for South Africa, with full investigative and prosecutorial powers and its independence protected by the constitution to fight corruption, ISS has found otherwise. 

The institute on Wednesday released findings of its research on effectively tackling corruption in South Africa. The research found  that anti-corruption reforms in developing countries frequently fail or backfire and may trigger political instability.

Research consultant for the justice and violence prevention programme at the ISS, Colette Ashton, said research has not found a powerful single anti-corruption agency with full investigative and prosecutorial powers entrenched in the constitution operating anywhere in the world.

“Successful agencies are often attacked or dismantled by powerful elites who do not benefit from the rule of law. The ISS study found no evidence globally that a single agency model outperforms a multi-agency approach,” she said.

Explaining why it is difficult to prosecute corruption, Ashton said the legal system was backward-looking.

“It's retrospective, it looks at retribution for past crimes. It doesn't look at how to prevent further harm. Also, a lot of corruption is not even a crime. I'm thinking of systemic corruption in organisations where the criminal acts of corruption are facilitated by people who they might be bullying, they might look the other way, but the legal system doesn't have any answers for that type of conduct.”

She said everywhere in the world, there was an inherent conflict of interest in prosecuting corruption.

“The most powerful members of society are sometimes the beneficiaries of corruption and responsible for enforcing anti-corruption rules. The department of justice, for instance, has got control over the budget of the NPA, and that's the kind of thing that needs to change,” she said.

Ashton said anti-corruption programmes were based on the assumption that transparency would automatically result in accountability, assuming that the rule of law, once people found out about corruption, would allocate consequences for that corruption in the form of accountability. “But in developing countries, as we've seen, transparency does not always amount to accountability, because we can't assume that the rule of law principle always applies.

“So this is a very particular context for anti-corruption enforcement, and we need to innovate, not relying completely on the Western orthodoxy of what we call the good governance paradigm,” she said.

Dr Pallavi Roy, SOAS University of London professor in political economy, said hard work is needed.

“Let's have more accountability and more transparency, and then the legislature will pass, and let's say an anti-corruption commission will be formed. But that's the easier thing — legislation. What is it that we can do in terms of design? And I think that's where the hard work lies. But once we are able to get to that level of hard work, the solutions are forthcoming,” she said.

Prof Sope Williams, head of department for mercantile law at Stellenbosch University, said:  “There's been so much about amending our whistle-blowing legislation but in a high-crime society we see the effects that whistle-blowing has on whistle-blowers. In a high-crime society, in a society where there's an abundance of firearms, you know, then people get killed.” 

Ashton said it was difficult to prosecute corruption in South Africa because democratic institutions were new and struggling to establish themselves.

“Also the high levels of violence and organised crime create difficult conditions in which to prosecute corruption. Now the factors that we've got, the blessing and the curse of rich natural resources that people want to exploit, and we have a highly developed banking system, supposedly ideal for laundering money,” she said.

Ashton said South Africa can become a regional leader in dealing with corruption. Making recommendations, she proposed incremental improvements to both the structure and the organisational culture of law enforcement agencies.

“We propose that resources are urgently provided for corruption prevention. It's shocking that the only dedicated corruption prevention unit in government, responsible for national, provincial and local government, is staffed by nine people.

“We recommend that the government and civil society partner the private sector in sectoral collective action projects.".”

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