In a sense, the learned Chancellor is echoing the sentiments expressed by Lord Acton, in a letter to his bishop back in the nineteenth century, when he wrote:

“Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

The thirty years of dominance by the ANC-led alliance, when taken together with its avowed striving for hegemonic control of all the levers of power in society (the central tenet of the strategy and tactics of its National Democratic Revolution (NDR), have proved to be a fertile breeding ground for greed run amok.

Greed is defined, with a little help from AI, as an excessive and insatiable desire for more, particularly more than what is necessary or deserved. It can manifest as a desire for material wealth, power, status, or even more tangible things like food. While some argue greed can be a positive motivator in economics, it is generally considered a negative trait, often associated with selfishness, materialism, and envy.

Greed is also regarded as one of the seven deadly sins identified by the Catholic Church. The other six are pride, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony, and sloth. There is some obvious overlap or association of greed with envy, lust and gluttony. In SA the manifestations of greed to which the Chancellor refers take the form of tenderpreneurism, state capture, contraventions of PRECCA (the Prevention and Combating of Corrupt Practices Act) and all manner of bribery and corruption in general.

The lust for power, wealth and political office is also generally informed by greed. SAPS even has provincial political-killing task teams, as local contestation for political positions has long abandoned the normal rules of engagement in competing for political office. It is well documented that votes at ANC conferences are “bought” in various ways.

Parlous state

Those who argue that greed in SA manifests as a “positive motivator in economics” will be stumped by the parlous state of the local economy, the joblessness which currently has a third of those in the workforce who are willing to work unemployed, and by the gross inequality in SA, which has reached an all-time high as the economy shrinks to a mere shadow of its former self. The Gini Index is a scientific measurement of inequality.

The Gini index for South Africa in 1994 is estimated to have been around 0.66 to 0.70, indicating high income inequality. While it’s difficult to pinpoint an exact figure due to data limitations in the early post-apartheid period, studies suggest a rise in inequality between 1993 and 2008. For 2025, while specific figures for the current year are unavailable, projections for the coming years suggest a continued high Gini index, potentially around 0.60 to 0.67, reflecting ongoing challenges in reducing inequality.

The loss of the ANC’s parliamentary majority in 2024 has not had the effect of tempering the greed levels in its leadership. The Deputy President of SA lives in accommodation he could not possibly have acquired from his earnings. The President himself has been known to stuff the couch at his game farm with dollar bills, and is a billionaire in rand terms.

He describes the ANC as “Accused number one” in the investigations conducted by the Zondo Commission; it found the ANC guilty of corruption in its cadre deployment policies which are illegal, unconstitutional and invalid.

Recommendations for further criminal investigation of more than ninety ANC leaders were made in the findings handed down by former Chief Justice Zondo. Very few prosecutions have followed in the three years since the findings were reported to the President.

There is obviously a need to address the greed in high places that is evident in SA. The media conference held by the chief of police in KZN on 6 July 2025 raised issues of corruption in high places: in the criminal justice system, in the correctional services system and even in the judiciary. General Mkhwanazi complained that a drug cartel in Gauteng has taken charge of the police and some politicians, as well as of some in the judiciary.

Languished, unattended to

His complaints appear to have been precipitated by a December 2024 instruction from the minister of police (currently on gardening leave) that live dockets for the investigation of political killings in KZN be removed to Pretoria, where they have languished, unattended to, ever since.

The Madlanga Commission of Inquiry has been appointed to investigate structural and operational aspects of the criminal justice administration and the other complaints raised by the general. It will commence hearing evidence on 1 September 2025 and is expected to deliver a preliminary report by the end of October, and a final report three months later. The scope of the work of the Commission suggests that this timetable may be excessively tight.

The lack of capacity in the criminal justice system to deal with serious corruption in the efficient and effective manner required by Section 195(1)(b) of the Constitution may be worthy of the initial attention of the Commission if it identifies as relevant the lack of capacity, resources, skills and training that is evident in the criminal justice system’s anti-corruption work.

As long ago as March 2011, the Constitutional Court ordered Parliament to pass legislation addressing what it had identified as a shortcoming in the legislation passed after the demise of the Scorpions unit in the NPA, which attended to anti-corruption work in the criminal justice administration until 2008, when the unit was summarily disbanded.

The Court issued an order that the legislation which created the Hawks in place of the Scorpions “…is inconsistent with the Constitution and invalid to the extent that it fails to secure an adequate degree of independence” for the Hawks. [Order 5].

This order was made on the basis of the majority opinion of the Court that “ … on a common-sense approach, our law demands a body outside executive control to deal effectively with corruption.”  Para [200].

No such body exists in SA. It has not been brought into existence due to the lack of political will to do so and in flagrant disregard of the binding nature of the order made. The lack of political will to obey a binding court order is a symptom of the malaise identified by the Chancellor in the speech quoted from above.

More emphatic

When further litigation ensued at the instance of the Helen Suzman Foundation and the original litigant, Bob Glenister, the Court was more emphatic in its November 2014 majority judgment:

“All South Africans across the racial, religious, class and political divide are in broad agreement that corruption is rife in this country and that stringent measures are required to contain this malady before it graduates into something terminal. We are in one accord that SA needs an agency dedicated to the containment and eventual eradication of the scourge of corruption. We also agree that the entity must enjoy adequate structural and operational independence to deliver effectively and efficiently on its core mandate.”  Paras [1] and [2]

Today, as the Madlanga Commission mulls its mandate and detailed terms of reference, it may do well to consider reminding government of the binding requirements of the Constitutional Court, which it has not put in place at any time since the Court ruled against it in 2011 and 2014. Justice Madlanga was on the bench in 2014.

It goes without saying that the minister of police (the one on gardening leave) would have had no business shunting around dockets concerning political killings, quintessentially a corruption investigation, had the relevant body not been under his control. General Mkhwanazi would not have been ordered to send his dockets to Pretoria without a ministerial intervention, and might not have blown the whistle as long and as loudly as he did on 6 July, 2025.