President Cyril Ramaphosa.Photo: @CyrilRamaphosa/X
President Cyril Ramaphosa has welcomed the Special Investigating Unit’s (SIU) recent moves to clamp down on corruption, saying its reports demonstrated that the government was serious about fighting graft.
“The SIU has made tremendous progress in helping us address the spate of corruption that has been happening and has been spreading,” Ramaphosa said while closing the ANC’s three-day national executive committee (NEC) meeting on Monday, adding that the reports would be acted on.
Last week, the SIU laid bare a R2.3 billion scandal at Tembisa Hospital at the centre of which is a syndicate allegedly run by Ramaphosa’s nephew Hangwani Morgan Maumela. The syndicate is said to have looted R816 560 717.
Two weeks ago, the Asset Forfeiture Unit seized assets worth R325 million from Maumela, including luxury cars, houses and a boat.
“Governance reform is not only about compliance. It is about restoring public confidence and trust and enabling the state to lead investment and industrialisation effectively,” Ramaphosa said.
In a bid to restore public trust in the government, the ANC’s NEC resolved that an economic war room would be established in the presidency to coordinate cross-government performance monitoring and publish regular scorecards on progress.
Professionalisation and merit-based appointments were non-negotiable, Ramaphosa said, adding that sound institutional governance is fundamental to the success of these efforts.
He said the ANC supported the implementation of the public service professionalisation framework to ensure that public administration is skilled, ethical and insulated from factional politics.
“The capacity of the state to deliver on projects requires serious engineering, financial and project management capabilities that need to be rebuilt,” he said. “We will want to focus on this at all layers of government — national, provincial and especially local government.”
He said there was a need to rebuild and reform state-owned enterprises (SOEs).
Recently, power utility Eskom announced a before-tax profit of R23.9 billion, marking its first return to profit in eight years.
“We are beginning to see progress in some of our SOEs that are improving their performance and attracting talented and competent people. Efficient and well-governed SOEs are vital to economic growth and national competitiveness. Corruption corrodes competitiveness,” Ramaphosa said.
“We therefore insist on consequence management, lifestyle audits and enforcement of integrity standards across the public sector.”