What a happy coincidence that the procurement experts of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation & Development (OECD) should report on SA’s inadequacies in countering corruption in our national procurement system in the same week in which the DA’s Glynnis Breytenbach introduced the chapter nine anticorruption commission bill to her colleagues in parliament’s justice portfolio committee (“OECD study red flags SA public procurement system”, and “DA makes case for independent anticorruption commission”, November 26).

There is serendipitous synchronicity in these two developments, which could soon see SA complying with its international treaty obligations to keep independent anticorruption machinery of state; the government properly implementing the binding findings in favour of a single independent entity for countering corruption that were made in the Glenister litigation; and parliament passing the legislation required to achieve these happy outcomes.

While it may be that the proposed chapter nine institution is not the only way to implement the law, no better suggestion has been made that ticks the boxes that bind the state, as created in the Constitutional Court judgments. A single stand-alone entity that specialises in anticorruption work using properly trained personnel who are adequately resourced, secure in their tenure of office and independent of the control of the executive is what we need, and are required by law to establish, to escape the scourge of systemic grand corruption in SA. All chapter nine institutions report to parliament, not to the executive, and all have constitutionally guaranteed independent status.

As long ago as August 2020 the national executive committee (NEC) of the ANC resolved to require the cabinet to move urgently to appoint a stand-alone specialist entity, clothed with the necessary independence to counter serious corruption and organised crime. The best the cabinet has managed to date is the new Investigating Directorate Against Corruption, a “stopgap measure” (in the words of then deputy minister John Jeffery) that does not comply with any of the binding criteria set in the Glenister litigation.

Despite the failure of the multi-agency approach in SA, the National Anticorruption Advisory Council still persists in the notion of retaining executive control by the insertion of an Office of Public Integrity to do some of the anticorruption work, with the National Prosecuting Authority still trying to do the prosecuting while under the final responsibility of the executive.

The Breytenbach proposals are consonant with the resolution of the ANC’s NEC and are deserving of the support of all who have nothing to fear from properly capacitated anticorruption experts.

Paul Hoffman
Director, Accountability Now