There is no doubt that the public sees corruption as one of the most serious problems facing our country, and one that directly affects service delivery.
The focus is often on high-value actions by officials. Often little attention is paid to the many thousands of smaller acts of corruption. This deserves more attention because it is directly experienced by millions of people, and because it directly affects service delivery.
The Department of Public Service and Administration and others have tried to measure the extent of corruption, as opposed to the perceptions. Research indicates that about 4% to 6% of the public, or between one million and 1,5-million people, are asked to pay a bribe every year.
For example, the Institute for Security Studies Victimisation Survey in 2003 found that being asked to pay a bribe was the second-most-common crime experienced by South Africans (after housebreakings). In one year, 5,6% of the public had been asked to pay a bribe.
Traffic fines (29%) topped the list, but much of this form of corruption occurs in basic service-delivery areas: employment (18%), social welfare (13%), identity documents (12%), drivers’ licences (10%), water and electricity (7%), telephone installation (3%), education (2%), and land and housing (1%).
It is a concern that in half the cases the bribes were paid, and that only 1,6% of cases were reported to the authorities, most often because the respondents did not think that action would be taken or they feared they would be victimised.
It is difficult to investigate corruption as usually both parties are guilty of a crime. It is also difficult to take action unless one testifies against the other, and even then corroborating evidence is vital. Usually it involves the cumbersome process of setting up an authorised “trap” to catch someone paying or accepting a bribe.
This is aggravated in the case of smaller offences, which usually involve bribes ranging from R50 to R500. The state simply lacks sufficient investigative capacity to deal with this number of offences, and they enjoy less priority when law enforcement is faced with serious violent crimes, organised crime and big economic crimes.
But the cumulative impact of petty corruption can be devastating for public confidence in government institutions, and its financial impact can be huge. The minister of social development has estimated that social grants of R1,5-billion a year are paid to people who do not qualify to receive them.
Clearly, to deal with corruption a wide range of preventative and other measures are needed, and many are already in place at a policy level.
A challenge that remains is to build sufficient capacity to ensure that, when allegations of corruption are raised, the state has skilled capacity to investigate and gather the evidence required before action can be taken.
Although the state has built up capacity to deal with larger cases of corruption through the South African Police Service’s commercial branch and the Scorpions, it has not had the capacity to investigate such volumes of small offences.
It is for this reason that the special investigating unit (SIU) has developed a focus on this kind of corruption over the past five years, and its capacity is expanding rapidly.
It has been able to do so partly because its government budget will quadruple from R22-million in 2002 to R89-million in 2009. But the main driver has been that state departments have started to use the unit to do their forensic investigations, and they will contribute an additional R100-million to the unit by 2007.
The best example is perhaps the Social Development Department, which is contributing nearly R60-million a year, enabling the special investigating unit to employ 200 staff to investigate social grant fraud.
The successes have been significant. In its first year, grants to the value of more than R50-million were removed. In addition, the deterrent effect of the investigation resulted in an increase of 105 000 people who cancelled their grants voluntarily. The value of these pensions was R413-million a year. Because the grants would have continued for some years, the total value of future savings is nearly R3,5-billion.
The challenge for the SIU and its partners in law enforcement is to continue the efforts to build their capacity to ensure that we can deal effectively with all forms of corruption.
Willie Hofmeyr is head of the SIU (and of the National Prosecuting Authority’s asset forfeiture unit)