Best advice in the world will not improve the national economy unless corruption is dealt with

30 September 2019 – 14:31 – BusinessDay

Let’s hope the realists on the president’s new economic advisory council are able to persuade him that necessary preconditions for new investment include business confidence and trust, and that investors possibly interested in SA want to know fealty to the rule of law is intact in the country.

The impunity those responsible for state capture, the looting of the state-owned enterprises and grand corruption still enjoy in SA is surely giving would-be investors cause for pause.

In March the president indicated that he would mull the establishment of an integrity commission under chapter nine of the constitution to prevent, combat, investigate and prosecute grand corruption, state capturers and kleptocrats.

Not only has the current criminal justice administration failed to end impunity for corrupt activities, but nothing further has been heard regarding the promised mulling and no new prosecutions have commenced.

Good governance promotes business confidence and helps create the trust levels that will stimulate new investment. Presidential dithering over the integrity commission and endemic paralysis in the criminal justice administration’s anticorruption machinery have the opposite effect.

All the best economic advice in the world will not improve our lot on grinding poverty, inequality and joblessness while nothing is done about ending corruption with impunity.

Paul Hoffman
Accountability Now