A protester holds up a poster at the Zuma Must Fall March in 2017. File photo
The thundering impediment of corruption on human development and its disproportionate effect on the most vulnerable in society cannot be overemphasised. Evidence abounds that corruption hikes costs and hampers access to crucial services including education, healthcare and justice.
Given the severity of its impact, a landmark agreement, the United Nations Convention against Corruption, was adopted in 2003. To date, close to 200 countries have committed to the convention’s anti-corruption obligations, in acknowledgement of its significance. However, two decades on, the world is still grappling with corruption.
We can work backwards to exhume experiences to understand the possible trigger points that must remain in our collective gaze to stifle the corruption scourge.
In times gone by, the potential to be corrupt was viewed purely through the lens of the principal-agent framework, where agents (managers of corporations or governments voted into power) were incentivised to discourage the pursuit of self-interest to the detriment of the principal (owners of businesses or citizens of a country).
However, trust in the redemptive power of incentives has been questioned from, at least, the 1950s when politicians in Italy, Japan and what was then West Germany received bribes from the US aerospace company Lockheed to secure contracts to sell US military aircraft to those countries.
In more recent times, the recently concluded public inquiry in South Africa on allegations of state capture, corruption and fraud in the public sector; the cash for peerages scandal in the United Kingdom in 2006 and the chief of police and deputy president of Malawi allegedly receiving kickbacks from a UK-based businessman in exchange for government contracts in 2022, are among some of the numerous spectacular cases of corruption unearthed across the world. These have made further dents in the veneer of incentivising agents to generate the conducive behaviour desired by principals.
The reported corporate and governmental corruption scandals suggest that what the protagonists intend to accomplish by paying bribes has not changed. Neither has the behaviour of the reliance on receiving bribes to alter outcomes.
Thus, although the incentives embedded in the principal-agent paradigm may have significant merits, the uncovering of numerous scandals suggests that either the incentives embedded in contracts, mouth-watering in many instances, do not change behaviour or that the change in behaviour is only ephemeral. Thus, incentives do very little to create an enduring commitment to the values cherished by principals.
Either way, the realisation that any potential proceeds from corruption are unlikely to permeate down to the less well-off in society has engendered consistent calls for action to keep the spotlight on anti-corruption measures until desired outcomes are achieved.
That is not to say that corruption must be tolerated if the most vulnerable in society benefit. The deep-seated inadequacy of such thought is palpable.
According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, the 2022 International Anti-Corruption Day on 9 December seeks to highlight the crucial link between anti-corruption and peace, security and development. Central to this theme is the idea that cooperation and the involvement of all institutions and people of all backgrounds are needed to defeat the sour effect of corruption.
In this context, a cue may be taken from countries and economic systems that have successfully curtailed corruption. The consensus is that these countries have developed strong traditions in transparency and information access. Indeed, many have pointed to lack of transparency as an enduring cancer that enables corrupt activities to fester.
But there is also a sense that transparency is being used in some quarters as political capital which is contemptuously exploited by unctuous agents who pretend to be bulwarks against corruption. This situation may persist when transparency is managed by agents. For example, in the principal-agent framework, agents are inherently assumed to be transparent and provide full, unfettered information on their activities to the principals.
These agents, in many instances, control transparency — that is the information flow that ensures accountability — and opaqueness at that level may still have damaging effects. It can be envisaged, in such circumstances, that the more agents stand to benefit from opaqueness, the more they will resist real transparency.
Undoubtedly, several layers of systems have been implemented at various levels and laws enacted to improve upon transparency. Nevertheless, the incidence of corruption still grows.
The 2022 International Anti-Corruption Day’s emphasis on cooperation among various counterparties and institutions provides an opportunity to reduce the discretionary power of agents and hike the normative constraints on corruption through actors who are controlling agents.
This is because transparency, on its own, is inadequate to curtail corruption, thus warranting supporting conditions. This makes civil society and stakeholder engagements, as well as collective action, essential ingredients to long-term anti-corruption success.
Civil society organisations are not interested in temporary compliance and continuously raise awareness, institute prevention campaigns and participate in policy formation, as well as the monitoring of the implementation of anti-corruption legislation and strategies.
These actions assist to build robust national anti-corruption capacity and encourage institutional reform. On that note, the clarion call for all of us to join hands and act with precision, care, conviction and belief against corruption is right on the money.
Happy International Anti-Corruption Day!
Professor Michael Graham is the programme head of development finance at Stellenbosch Business School
The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Mail & Guardian.