CORRUPTION NEWS

Zuma gets his Nkandla bill

Jacob Zuma’s portion of the Nkandla bill is a scant R7.8-million, says the National Treasury. The state purse-keeper submitted its report to the Constitutional Court on Monday, keeping to the deadline of 28 June. The amount is the equivalent of three years’ presidential salary. It now lies with the Constitutional Court to approve the determined Read more >

CORRUPTION NEWS

Zuma, NPA denied leave to appeal

A full bench of the North Gauteng High Court has dismissed the application by President Jacob Zuma and the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) officials for leave to appeal the spy tapes ruling. In April, the North Gauteng High court found the prosecuting authority’s decision to drop corruption charges against Zuma was irrational, and set aside Read more >

CAMPAIGNS

Meet your public protector ad hoc committee

The political parties which comprise the ad-hoc committee. On 24 May the National Assembly appointed an ad-hoc committee to oversee the appointment process for a new public protector. The non-renewable seven-year term of incumbent Thuli Madonsela comes to an end in October 2016 and a successor must take over. After weeks of scrutinising, shortlisting and Read more >

CORRUPTION NEWS

Reforming party finance in SA: exploring the options

By Gary Pienaar and Collette Schulz-Herzenberg First published on Human Sciences Research Council Money plays a fundamental role in a democracy. Political parties need to reach their constituencies and inform them of their policies. Not disclosing private donations can lead to corruption, cronyism and policy capture, but would disclosing donations necessarily increase public trust? In Read more >

CORRUPTION NEWS

Cleaning up political party funding

South Africa holds local government elections in just under two months. Our new three-part series looks at political party funding and the implications of disclosure or non-disclosure of private funding. Part one examines the results of a 2015 global study focusing on the transparency and effectiveness of political finance regimes. In part two we republish Read more >

CORRUPTION NEWS

How open are SA’s official statistics?

South Africa recently joined the likes of Burkina Faso, Kenya and Ghana in developing and launching an open data portal that makes published government data accessible for free to the public. The South African Data Portal is one of South Africa’s commitments in the Open Government Partnership, and is currently in a year-long pilot phase. Read more >

CORRUPTION NEWS

Corruption and Poaching: The Tusk at Hand

By Maurice Oniango and Andrew Ochieng First published by Journalists for Transparency Kenya, South Africa and Tanzania are waging a war on poaching, but one of the greatest challenges to winning it is corruption among the people fighting it. Secretive criminal syndicates pay off police, judges and customs officials to keep their lucrative trade moving. Read more >

CAMPAIGNS

Correspondence with public protector ad hoc committee

At the end of May, once we knew who would be serving on the ad hoc committee to oversee the public protector appointment, we wrote to the committee expressing our support, and making a request or two. Committee chairperson Makhosi Khoza sent us a cordial reply, saying that our interest was appreciated, and that the Read more >

CAMPAIGNS

Who will fill Thuli Madonsela’s shoes?

By Kavisha Pillay, project manager, Bua Mzansi campaign If staff at the Office of the Public Protector had their way, a high court judge would be their new boss, according to a survey by civil society organisation Corruption Watch. This is the view of most of the staff working with Public Protector Thuli Madonsela, whose Read more >