Nkosikhulule Nyembezi
CAPE TOWN - If you have ever wondered what South Africa’s dismembered corpse would have looked like if it had spent many months getting bleached and bloated by a corruption river, it floated up to the Union Buildings and Parliament dispatch boxes on February 1 at 2.30pm.
Upstream, the Presidency received the second part of the long-awaited state capture report, which makes explosive findings about state-owned enterprises Transnet and Denel.
The handover, which was done behind closed doors at the Union Buildings, comes almost a month after the first instalment was handed to President Cyril Ramaphosa and about which decisive legal and political action to remove implicated individuals from positions of power are yet to be taken.
Downstream in Cape Town, MPs lashed out at the Presidency over the backlog and inefficiencies in implementing the Special Investigating Unit reports as Minister in the Presidency Mondli Gungubele's office presented feedback on SIU reports to the standing committee on public accounts members, including concluded investigations on personal protective equipment corruption and maladministration, and corruption across the state.
Let’s begin with some real talk. The investigation and prosecution system of corruption was in crisis before the coronavirus pandemic – a direct effect of government cuts leading to closures and staff shortages in key institutions responsible for curbing corruption.
Between 2018 and 2020, the Department of Justice’s budget was cut significantly.
The SIU, the National Prosecuting Authority and the Hawks have been hit to the point of being almost paralysed. Annual spending on investigation and prosecution of corruption-related crimes fell significantly over five years, as annual reports submitted to Parliament by the entities reveal a continuing pattern of underfunding relating to their public mandate.
Then Covid-19 hit, gumming up the system further and leading to widespread cancellations and delays in following through investigations and prosecution on key corruption cases.
The consequence is an enormous backlog that has been largely overlooked by politicians, in part because they think that most people do not regularly interact with the justice system as they do with other branches of the government.
Ramaphosa’s office has processed 81 SIU reports since he took office in 2018. It is estimated that there are more than 200 reports waiting to be finalised and referred to the relevant institutions such as the Office of the Auditor-General. It acknowledges that its administrative system is not robust enough to provide a clear filtering process, and it has a backlog of reports for processing and implementation.
The Presidency’s Matsietsi Mekhwe told MPs: the Presidency, the SIU and the AG’s office are constrained by the lack of responses from the institutions to which the referrals are made. It is working on a plan to ensure that when the president released the investigation reports to state institutions, copies were also provided to the AG for inclusion in audit plans. That, it is hoped, will strengthen monitoring and will be highlighted in the audit outcomes of implicated institutions.
We don’t tend to describe court delays as a “waiting list”, but a long queue for justice is what the numbers add up to. This affects victims and witnesses, as well as defendants in corruption cases.
The lack of responses from the institutions to which the referrals are made is a lame excuse in the face of the grotesque abuses of state resources by corrupt politicians colluding with a wide range of culprits.
And another offer to establish a consultation process to manage the interactions on the reports is not enough demonstration of political will in the Ramaphosa administration.
All must wait, sometimes for years, for the outcome of events that may well have changed their lives.
For those placed on suspension and subsequently found not guilty, there is no recompense for time wasted.
For whistle-blowers who are victimised by those they provide evidence against, their lives are turned into hell as they constantly live under fear of losing their jobs, having their careers jeopardised, or facing intimidation and death threats.
Cumulatively, and over time, the risk is a wider loss of public confidence in the political institutions and the legal system’s ability to effectively combat corruption in the public and private sector.
Among victims’ groups, one fear is that offenders may be emboldened in the confidence that their political connections will keep them immune from investigation, prosecution and conviction.
That is a raw display of lack of political will by politicians whose responsibility is to uphold the Constitution and the law.
It is in contrast with concerted efforts by civil society groups to expose corruption and to support whistle-blowers who brave their careers and lives to ensure there is evidence to prosecute and convict culprits.
It has lost the governing ANC and other small parties a significant chunk of public confidence and electoral support.
Not only that, but it has produced a stench so nauseating that every South African will have to wear a mask while listening to Ramaphosa’s State of the Nation Address on February 10 and pondering if the Ramaphosa administration is really that much of a promised leap from this sort of corruption scourge to some other faction-based party conspiracies that are increasingly part of the dangerous undertow of ANC unfulfilled election promises.
Strong indications are that citizens are not up to holding their collective breath for too long, and are demanding decisive action that is not diluted by the damaging power struggle for leadership positions before the ANC national conference later in the year.
But the announcement that Ramaphosa will submit the commission report to Parliament by June 30 provides cause for concern as well as reassurance.
Furthermore, Scopa’s chastisement of the Presidency lacking urgency and stricter control in implementing remedial actions on corruption findings reinforces the same cause for concern as well as reassurance. Scopa gave the Presidency until the end of February to provide information on concrete progress.
If straightforward SIU and state capture commission recommendations do not result in voluntary resignations by senior politicians and, instead, result in more appeals, then reduced waiting lists in the justice systems will not be achieved.
The Presidency, whose incumbent has promised so much and delivered so little to fight corruption, is right about one thing: the backlog in the investigation, prosecution, and conviction of corruption cases is a disaster. But a system-wide crisis created by chronic underfunding will not, with the best will in the world, be resolved by prolonged consultations and failures to act. This is no way to deliver justice.
Nyembezi is a human rights lawyer and policy analyst
Cape Times