Members of Parliament were apparently “visibly shocked” on Wednesday when the head of the Special Investigating Unit (SIU), Willie Hofmeyr, laid out for them the sheer scale of graft that is under investigation across the state system. They ought not to have been.
After all, it was Parliament that shut down an effective anticorruption force in the Scorpions and it did so over the protests of Hofmeyr, among others. Still, the numbers he presented are staggering.
Every single municipal district in North West province is under investigation for alleged fraud, corruption and maladministration. Something like half of all government’s 10 000 subsidised housing projects are suspected of being tainted by tender irregularities. The public works department is apparently riddled with corruption, with millions paid out to companies in which staff have interests.
The police department faces multiple allegations of impropriety, not just in relation to the controversial procurement of new headquarters in Pretoria and Durban, but also to the construction of about 33 police stations. Even the department of arts and culture has questions to answer about the spending of World Cup funds.
Meanwhile, the Hawks, created by Parliament as a putative replacement for the Scorpions, have been sailing ever closer to the political wind. They may have avoided dealing with the arms deal, but they are investigating massive fraud in the sale of medical equipment by Gaston Savoi’s Intaka to provincial health departments, with the connivance of senior politicians, and the involvement of members of the crime intelligence division in the mafia networks surrounding fraud-accused Radovan Krejcir.
The Constitutional Court has now ruled that the structure of the Hawks makes its members vulnerable to political meddling and that the body doesn’t meet the standard of independence required of a corruption-fighting force.
The SIU is even more vulnerable. It has grown enormously in recent years and has begun to take on genuinely sensitive investigations. But it was brought into existence by presidential proclamation and can just as easily be shut down.
All of this represents immense peril: Hofmeyr’s report to Parliament and the widening Krejcir investigation both illustrate just how close South Africa is to the brink. Only effective institutions in government, the media and civil society can keep us from tipping over it entirely.
But there is a moment of opportunity, too. The Constitutional Court has given Parliament 18 months to fix what it broke when it shut down the Scorpions. There is a party of governance within Cabinet, Parliament and sections of the ANC.
It needs to seize this moment before it passes and create an agency with the tools, the structure and the personalities to get the job done. It is very nearly too late, but not quite.
To read the first half of the editorial (Arms trade threat to SA’s values) click here