CHAPTER 9
Countering Corruption
Hear from two former Constitutional judges:
Richard Goldstone
Kate O’Regan
Establish an Integrity Commission to end corruption
The corrupt are thieves, they steal from the poor by diverting public funds meant for service delivery, poverty alleviation and the promotion of a better life for all. The looted money is sent overseas and hidden in bank accounts and investments that are difficult to track and trace. The wide-scale looting that has taken place in South Africa is estimated to be as much as R1.5 trillion. A trillion has 12 zeroes to the left of the decimal point. (R1,500 000 000 000)
With our high unemployment rate, there are millions of desperately poor and hungry people in our country – they have each lost a significant portion of this money intended to uplift them and improve their lives.
In order to stop the looting of our coffers, the current culture of corruption with no consequences must end. The best way to stop corruption in South Africa is for the government to create a constitutionally compliant entity that is able to prevent, combat, investigate and prosecute corruption, while raking back the loot already stolen.
Only a specialised and well-trained Chapter 9 Integrity Commission, that is independent, well-resourced and secure in its tenure of office, will have the power to bring the corrupt to justice.
Corruption is one of the great scourges of our age. As this book makes clear, it is estimated that trillions of dollars are paid in bribes every year and that developing regions lose ten times more to corruption than they receive in foreign aid, with illicit outflows of the funds that they desperately need totalling more than 1 trillion US dollars per year. The reason for this is not a lack of laws prohibiting corruption in its various forms (there is no shortage of them) but the impunity enjoyed by those guilty of contravening them, resulting from their control of the institutions which are supposed to see to it that the law is enforced.
click to download the book
Integrity Commission Bill, 2021 – proposed by Accountability Now.
To be read with: Constitution Eighteenth Amendment Bill, 2021 – proposed by Accountability Now
And: Memorandum on a constitutional amendment and enabling legislation for anti-corruption machinery of state in SA.
YOUTH AGAINST CORRUPTION
In Collaboration with ACTIVATE
Share your voice:
With your support, we can fast-track the establishment of a dedicated anti-corruption Integrity Commission. The letter below can be emailed to both the President and the Secretary of the Constitutional Reform Committee of the National Assembly as a way of expressing your support for the establishment of a dedicated, independent and effective anti-corruption Integrity Commission. Fighting corruption demands active citizenship over passive acceptance. Send your email and make your voice heard.
Email Addresses to send the letter to:
presidentRSA@presidency.gov.za & vramaano@parliament.gov.za
Want to do more? Share our campaign on social media and encourage your community to stand with us as we fight corruption in South Africa. Share and follow our #CrushCorruptionSA campaign for further updates.
Relevant Articles
All hands to the pumps
Paul Hoffman The fallout from General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi’s incendiary revelations at his 6 July briefing has now reached three of the four organs of state which could be involved in addressing his concerns. The executive has had the chairs in cabinet re-arranged by...
LETTER: Madlanga commission should probe graft laws
Failure to implement the Glenister findings is at the heart of the corruption malaise 27 July 2025 - 20:04 The first and most urgent work of the Madlanga commission of inquiry is to examine the utility of the laws and policies in place in SA for countering the...
Commission unlikely to stick to timelines: Hoffman
The President's continued use of Commissions of Inquiry, to try and curb corruption remains under scrutiny. Advocate Paul Hoffman of Accountability Now, argues that the terms of reference in the Madlanga Inquiry are too broad. #eNCA #DStv403 #QuestionThinkAct
The faulty rationale behind the Madlanga Commission of Inquiry
By Paul Hoffman Paul Hoffman was lead counsel in the Glenister litigation. The vast breadth of the mandate given to the commission of inquiry headed by Acting Deputy Chief Justice Mbuyiseli Madlanga will keep it busy for years, doing work a functioning criminal...
The GNU needs a constitutionally compliant course correction on countering corruption
On 11 July 2025 Accountability Now addressed an email to the President. It reads as follows: We write this open letter to you in advance of your address to the nation scheduled for 7pm on Sunday 13 July 2025. We hope that our intervention will assist you in the...
Ramaphosa’s announcement utterly underwhelming: Accountability Now
The cure to the malaise of which General Mkhwanazi complains
Paul Hoffman | 10 July 2025 Paul Hoffman says our system for preventing, detecting, investigating and prosecuting the corrupt is not working optimally The commissioner of police in KZN has raised his head above the parapet to voice his concerns around the trajectory...
The impact of the Mkhwanazi revelations on the future of the GNU
The KZN Police Commissioner put the cat among the political pigeons on Sunday. His essential complaint is that the executive branch of government has interfered illegally with the work of the police by sidelining investigations that have the potential to expose...
LETTER: Invoking the rule of law decade late
Accelerate the bills pending in parliament for the establishment and enablement of a new Chapter 9 anticorruption commission 09 July 2025 - 15:44 President Cyril Ramaphosa gestures during the Brics Summit 2025 at Museu de Arte Moderna on July 6 2025 in Rio de Janeiro,...
LETTER: Mashatile’s risk of conflict
Deputy president’s sister-in-law is linked to national lottery tender 02 July 2025 - 14:54 Amid concern about the involvement of the twin sister of Paul Mashatile’s wife in the largesse available to the winning bidder of the competition to run the national lottery, it...
The Hawks Keepers have Poisoned our land.
Jacques Pauw, author of two anti-corruption treatises “The President’s Keepers” and “Our Poisoned Land”, has made a fact-filled and sterling contribution to the debate on the future of the criminal justice system in SA in his News24 weekend essay “ Long claw of the...
LETTER: Validity of the IMF loan
An authorising special resolution by the National Assembly is needed Your report on the large R27bn IMF loan apparently secured by the government refers (“David Masondo defends R27bn World Bank loan”, June 24). According to the report, the EFF has objected to the loan...
A national dialogue can work … if the right players discuss the right topics
The official announcement of the upcoming national dialogue has been met with derision and disgust in some quarters. A long litany of gripes and groans can be gleaned from media reports. With a budget for the dialogue estimated at R700 million, the EFF describes the...
LETTER: NPA is patently not independent
Now the justice department is keeping the record of the Zondo state capture commission away from the NPA 10 June 2025 - 13:23 During the course of a wide-ranging 27 minute interview with Newsroom Afrika, national director of public prosecutions Shamila Batohi insisted...
Adv Paul Hoffman weighs on the NPA track record
Staying on that story, Democratic Alliance (DA) Member of Parliament on the Committee for Justice and Constitutional Development, Damien Klooper, says the National Prosecuting Authority is failing at the most basic level, with the Timothy Omotoso case being the latest...
Suggested memo from POTUS to PROSA
By Paul Hoffman The brambles of fact-checking, the recriminations from the commentariat, the revealed misconceptions in Washington and the need for a reset of relations between South Africa and the US all suggest that constructive communication is now vital. What if...
Time to jettison the NDR ideology holding South Africa hostage | IRR Webinar
Stream Video Here Join Anthea Jeffery, IRR Head of Policy Research, for the launch of her latest IRR report: "Enemy of Growth: The Ideology Holding South Africa Hostage". Jeffery and Hermann Pretorius, IRR Head of Strategic Communications, will discuss: - National...
LETTER: GNU must roll up sleeves
No legislation for jobs nor any effective policy changes have emerged The whole world watched the smackdown televised infotainment in the Oval Office last Wednesday and now knows for sure that: SA is a dangerous place for its whole population, not only white farmers....
NACAC caught between rock of constitutionalism and hard place of SA politics
The rock of constitutionalism is the foundation of the new or post-liberation order in SA. The Constitution and the rule of law are regarded as supreme, and these basic parameters are recorded in Section 1 of Chapter One of the Constitution itself. This means that our...
MK and EFF get lost in translation on Paul Pretorius SC
Paul Hoffman on political interference masquerading as concern for the rule of law Last year Paul Pretorius SC and Matthew Chaskalson SC, both Zondo Commission evidence leaders, accepted temporary assignments with the NPA to help boost its skills and capacity in...
LETTER: EFF attack on NPA is misplaced
Nobody better placed than Zondo commission’s evidence leader to aid the National Prosecuting Authority The EFF has issued a media statement containing a scurrilous attack on the efforts of the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) to beef up its anticorruption capacity...
Growing SA’s economy must be preceded by shrinking the corruption
By Paul Hoffman The economy of South Africa has been in the doldrums roughly since Thabo Mbeki left office in 2008. If South Africa had maintained the solid growth achieved during his presidency most of the problems of poverty, inequality and joblessness would not now...
Justice Richard Goldstone addresses the 15th Commonwealth Regional Conference
GOOD ON PAPER, not so much in practice
By Paul Hoffman In many countries around the world there is no shortage of laws against corruption. The challenge is to create a governance framework that is itself corruption-resilient, so the laws can be enforced efficiently and effectively by personnel of...
Seven deadliest FAQs on countering corruption in SA
Paul Hoffman says it is politically suicidal to be seen to be opposing the adoption of anti-corruption laws 1. Why is so much fuss made about corruption in SA? The Constitutional Court has provided the best short answer to this question given the context of what the...
Justice is like air and clean water
By Paul Hoffman The full quote from which the headline above is taken reads: “Justice is not a luxury, it is something we need like air and clean water”. The author of the quote is Vera Jourova, a Czech lawyer and politician, who until 2024 was the European Commission...
Global call for integrity: the urgent need for an international anti-corruption court
By Paul Hoffman The end of the Scorpions marked the beginning of the State Capture project undertaken during the two Jacob Zuma presidencies. No one today seriously regards the Hawks as any part of the solution to the challenges of grand corruption. The scourge of...
Are we living in a BANI country?
Paul Hoffman Janet Jobson is a “merchant of hope”. She has to be because she heads up the Desmond and Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation. She has brought the concept of “BANI” into the national discourse, and not a moment too soon either. Google reveals the meaning of the...
Renew, Replace and Reform, the three Rs for reviving the ANC’s support
Paul Hoffman The ANC, still the largest party in Parliament but no longer in the majority, has stated publicly that it needs to renew, or it will perish. It has learnt well from its predecessor in government, the National Party, which adopted a similar slogan...
Does the prosecution authority in SA have any prospect of acting independently?
Under the Constitution SA has a single national prosecuting authority (NPA) led by a National Director appointed by the president, with Directors of Public Prosecutions for all provinces and, at the bottom of the organisation, legions of prosecutors. According to...