While the annual ranking of perceptions of corruption attracts a lot of attention, the way in which corruption creates poverty is often overlooked.
Transparency International’s (TI) 2007 Corruption Perceptions Index ranked South Africa at 5,1, compared with log leader Denmark at 9,4. While South Africa has improved on its ranking of 4,6 last year, any corruption is still a driver of poverty in the country.
“Corruption funnels relatively scarce resources away from desperately needed public programmes,” says Derek Luyt of the Public Service Accountability Monitor (PSAM) at Rhodes University. “In this sense, corruption really does impact hardest upon the poorest of the poor.”
There are many examples of how poor people suffer because of corruption and a lack of accountability, says Jay Kruuse at the PSAM. Kruuse pinpoints the school nutrition programme, administered by the Eastern Cape department of education: “It has been plagued by allegations of corruption and the overpayment of suppliers who have not honoured their contractual undertakings to deliver food to schools in the province. Children have had to go hungry as a result.”
He adds that there are numerous cases where building contractors, responsible for the construction of low-cost houses, have been paid despite having not completed work satisfactorily. “The poorest of the poor have to occupy homes of inferior quality owing to a failure by the department of housing to curtail and address non-performing contractors.”
He pointed out that private gain is not the only motive for the abuse of public office, nor is corruption the only form of public resource abuse. Luyt said “corruption flourishes in societies where governments eschew accountability and where private interests receive priority over service to the public”. Because of this PSAM believes it is important to consider the overall accountability of a country’s public sector to its citizens, “particularly in terms of its allocation and management of, and justification for, the use of public resources”.
TI defines corruption as the use of public power for private gain and warns that the cost of corruption is not only political or economic, but also has social consequences.
Democratic institutions lose legitimacy in the eyes of the public and a culture of accountability cannot flourish in a corrupt climate. “The effect of corruption on the social fabric of society is the most damaging of all. It undermines people’s trust in the political system, in its institutions and its leadership,” says TI.
The TI Bribe Payers Index assesses “the supply side of corruption” — the degree to which countries offer bribes while operating abroad. The impact of this behaviour is even greater on developing countries, according to TI chair Huguette Labelle, as it “actively undermines the best efforts of governments in developing nations to improve governance, thereby driving the vicious cycle of poverty”.
Hassan Lorgat of TI’s South Africa chapter says: “Without good governance, we cannot eradicate poverty; for no corrupt government is interested in the eradication of poverty.”