Public servants should be open and honest and not engage in corruption and ”wheeler-dealing”, Anglican Archbishop Njongonkulu Ndungane said on Sunday.
”Only the highest ethical practice is acceptable. Corruption and wheeler-dealing must have no place — neither in public life nor in business,” Ndungane said at a meeting of Anglicans in Pinetown in KwaZulu-Natal.
”Tangible hope comes when elected representatives — at national, provincial and local level — and the officials who support them, are there as public servants, not to play with power and pursue self-enrichment.”
Ndungane’s remarks come amid a clampdown by the government on corrupt public servants.
Former deputy president Jacob Zuma was fired by President Thabo Mbeki last month after he was implicated in the corruption trial of Schabir Shaik.
Zuma has been provisionally charged with two counts of corruption in the Durban Magistrate’s court.
Five African National Congress MPs were forced to resign after they were implicated in a travel voucher scam.
Ndungane also called for the G8 leaders who are meeting in Scotland this week to ”increase aid, eliminate debt, bring trade justice” so that the Millennium Development Goals — to halve global poverty by 2015 — would be met.
”The church must help put the maximum pressure possible from global opinion on global leaders to make these goals a reality,” Ndungane said. – Sapa