The Madlanga commission is now on show, a national dialogue on the orgy of entanglements between politicians and criminal syndicates, says the writer. Judging by the commentary from members of the public, commissions of enquiry have become a ritual substitute for accountability. Photo: Delwyn Verasamy
In 2018, I shared an idea with a few friends and colleagues. To deal with systemic corruption, in the context of weakened state capacity and a dangerous shift of national attention away from development towards outrage about crime and corruption, a truth and amnesty process — a truth and reconciliation-type intervention — might be a viable option.
The reaction was sharp. Some colleagues, like Dumisani Hlophe-Tembe, objected strongly, believing it would grant a free pass to people who should face the long arm of the law.
Others were more measured. Advocate Vasu Gounden, a senior expert on global governance and conflict-resolution from the African Centre for the Constructive Resolution of Disputes (Accord), suggested a more scientific approach. He shared comparative case studies of corruption amnesty experiments from different countries.
At the time, the idea seemed provocative, even reckless. But given the ongoing national spectacle, with cycles of commissions, prosecutions and exposures that fail to deliver closure, I have returned to that idea, this time with the benefit of historical evidence, comparative analysis and theoretical reflection. South Africa has not ignored corruption. On the contrary, it has tried a multitude of interventions. The Scorpions once embodied a bold prosecutorial strike force. They were disbanded in a storm of political contestation. Their successor, the Hawks, inherited neither their independence nor effectiveness and became entangled in the politics they were meant to police.
The investigative directorate in the National Prosecuting Authority, created to pursue corruption and state capture cases, has struggled with insufficient resources and cases that are too complex, involving procurement webs, international networks and forensic evidence that are beyond its capacity. It has now been implicated in the Madlanga commission.
Once shackled to presidential proclamations and sealed reports, the Special Investigating Unit has greater scope to act proactively.
Yet, even in its strengthened form, it can only remove ill-gotten assets through forfeiture. Prosecution remains outside its mandate, requiring referral to an already overburdened NPA and the court system. The result is paradoxical. Wrongdoers can be stripped of wealth, yet avoid legal sanction. The auditor-general has gained new legal powers to escalate “material irregularities” and issue binding notices. Yet enforcement is weak because of scale. Findings accumulate, reports pile up, but the conversion of irregularities into criminal sanctions is slow.
Parliament’s Standing Committee on Public Accounts hearings are another example. They expose, dramatise and even embarrass, but do not close the loop. Offenders face ridicule on live television yet walk away without consequence. The committee is accountability as theatre. The Zondo Commission of Inquiry into State Capture was monumental. It traced the architecture of corruption with unprecedented clarity, named names, wrote thousands of pages and handed over recommendations. Yet the commission itself, like all others, had no enforcement power.
The Madlanga commission is now on show, a national dialogue on the orgy of entanglements between politicians and criminal syndicates. Judging by the commentary from members of the public, commissions of enquiry have become a ritual substitute for accountability.
The result is a pattern. South Africa has perfected the art of exposure without closure. Evidence accumulates. Hearings multiply. Reports stack up. Yet prosecutions are slow, sanctions rare, deterrence absent. Exposure has become ritualised; an end rather than a means to justice.
This ritualism cannot be understood without history. A book titled Apartheid Grand Corruption, 1976–1994, by the Institute for Security Studies, shows how, by the 1990s, the apartheid state had become criminalised. Corruption was not an aberration. It was woven into governance. Laws were designed to facilitate graft.Authoritarian secrecy shielded private deals. Those who profited under apartheid were not swept away by democracy. Many transitioned seamlessly into the new order, negotiating their survival and embedding themselves in the networks of the democratic state. They carried forward practices of secrecy, profiteering and collusion. Some are respected business tycoons today.
The new state inherited legal frameworks designed to conceal. It took years to dismantle the structures that enabled corruption. The myth that corruption was born with democracy collapses under scrutiny. Corruption was already embedded in apartheid, only less visible. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) of the 1990s dealt with political violence but left economic crimes untouched. The networks of profiteering were never subjected to truth-telling or restitution. This absence has haunted the democratic era. A Corruption TRC, as I propose it, today could provide the historical closure that was denied then, by linking past and present, apartheid corruption and state capture, into a single reckoning.
This proposal does not seek to undermine other government measures. It aims to add a dimension that makes it possible to combat corruption quickly so that South Africa can focus on growth and on dealing with crime and poverty. International cases show the risks and possibilities. Tunisia’s Arbitration and Reconciliation Law of 2017 allowed officials and business elites to halt prosecutions if they returned some stolen funds. It was justified as an economic necessity.
Yet loopholes allowed concealment and public anger followed. This was exposure without closure. Hong Kong in the 1970s presents the opposite. The governor declared a partial amnesty when the Independent Commission Against Corruption was created. Lesser cases before 1977 were pardoned and severe cases were prosecuted. This created closure while preserving deterrence. Freed from endless retrospective prosecutions, the commission focused on reform. Within a decade, Hong Kong shifted from one of the most corrupt cities in Asia to one of the cleanest.
Moldova in 2016 shows how amnesty can collapse into impunity. Draft laws to legalise illicit wealth with a token fee to the state would have blocked scrutiny of officials’ assets. Public protest forced withdrawal. Brazil has repeatedly attempted electoral amnesties for politicians implicated in campaign finance crimes. These proposals were self-serving and met with public fury. By contrast, Singapore and China pursued a punitive path. Singapore coupled rapid economic reform with draconian punishment for corruption, including prison sentences and loss of all assets. China went further, making corruption at the highest level punishable by death. In the Philippines, former president Rodrigo Duterte authorised a drug war “death squad”, illustrating how some states resort to extrajudicial measures in the name of deterrence.
These Asian models created fear and deterrence, though at a heavy moral dilemma — if one applies a liberal lens. Yet they showcase a spectrum of options, from restorative models to punitive extremes. South Africa’s own TRC pioneered the idea of restorative justice. Offenders were required to confess fully to qualify for amnesty.
Victims were given recognition, the truth was established and a historical record was created. Punishment was not abandoned, but it was redefined to include the restoration of dignity, acknowledgement of harm and the conditions of exclusion from public life. Now, the failure to prosecute those who did not get amnesty is a subject of yet another commission of enquiry.
A Corruption TRC would adopt this logic. It is not about free passes. It is about speed, structured consequences and closure. Those who confess would lose illicit wealth, properties and privileges. They would face exclusion from public office. They would be required to step down from penthouses into ordinary life. This is not impunity; it is accountability by other means. But there would also be hard edges. Those who conceal, lie and fail to confess would face the harshest penalties — life imprisonment for major offenders, full prosecution for architects of state capture, the seizure of all assets.
The Corruption TRC would thus create a sharp line between honesty and dishonesty, between confession and concealment. The idea of a Corruption TRC draws from transitional justice. In post-authoritarian societies, truth commissions were created not because ordinary courts were abandoned but because they were overwhelmed.
Systemic wrongs could not be prosecuted one by one. Conditional amnesty offered a different bargain — confession and truth in exchange for protection from punishment. This logic can apply to corruption when it reaches systemic levels. Institutional economics reinforces this view.
Corruption creates perverse equilibria. Everyone participates; no one can withdraw unilaterally. In such an equilibrium, gradual reform is too weak. A systemic shock is needed.
A Corruption TRC can act as that shock. It can reset the equilibrium by forcing disclosure, removing illicit gains and excluding corrupt actors from public office. State capacity theory adds a third dimension. Institutions built to prosecute isolated crimes cannot cope when the system is compromised. They fragment cases across agencies, create bottlenecks and slow enforcement. The gap between exposure and closure widens. A TRC, by contrast, centralises the process, creates speed and resolves the backlog.
The proposition is not to replace existing institutions but to complement them. It is to recognise that conventional measures are too slow when corruption becomes systemic. Courts, commissions, hearings and investigative units expose but do not close.
A Corruption TRC would close. It would invite confession in exchange for conditional amnesty. It would impose restitution and exclusion from office. It would prosecute those who conceal, lie and perpetrate systemic theft. It would draw on international precedent, historical necessity and institutional theory.
Above all, it would transform exposure into closure.
South Africa has lived too long in cycles of outrage without resolution. A Corruption TRC would not erase guilt, but it would reclaim truth, recover resources and release national energy for the urgent tasks of development, security and renewal.
Vasu Gounden and his Accord team, with their vast experience in transitional justice work on the continent, can offer valuable insights to this frontier idea.
Busani Ngcaweni is director: Centre for Public Policy and African Studies, University of Johannesburg.