HEROES & ZEROES

SABC misspends billions, named zero again

Parliament’s portfolio committees have their fair share of drama when calling to account government departments and entities on their performance. When the SABC appeared before the communications portfolio committee this week, it wasn’t just the public broadcaster’s whopping R3.3-billion in irregular expenditure, but also the reason for this financial fiasco that boggled their minds. Thus Read more >

HEROES & ZEROES

Fighting corruption with technology

Corruption Watch has once again entered the Global Innovation Competition (GIC), and we need your support, because the public voting round has opened! South Africa is one of the 12 key countries taking part in the 2015 competition, organised by Johannesburg-based Making All Voices Count – the others are Bangladesh, Ghana, Indonesia, Kenya, Liberia, Mozambique, Nigeria, Read more >

HEROES & ZEROES

Taxpayers’ money not spent on water service in Madibeng

The municipal management of Madibeng, in the North West, is not doing its best with taxpayers’ money. This is the municipality that was in the news earlier in the year when water-related service delivery protests resulted in several deaths, some at the hands of police. It seems that not much has changed, as some residents Read more >

HEROES & ZEROES

TI Integrity Award winners announced on Friday

Anti-corruption heroes come in all shapes and sizes, from all around the world, and from various walks of life. There is no stereotype – it could be your next-door neighbour, or it could be someone like Cardinal Christian Tumi of Cameroon, or Vietnamese schoolteacher Le Hien Duc. The latter two are previous laureates of Transparency Read more >

HEROES & ZEROES

Dishonest principals in the line of fire

Our zeroes this week are principals who, according to a preliminary investigation conducted by the KwaZulu-Natal education department, have artificially inflated the number of pupils enrolled in their schools. As many as 200 000 ghost pupils have been found – in one district alone, and there are 11 more to be assessed. Offenders have been warned Read more >

HEROES & ZEROES

Public Works comes clean on misuse of public funds

The Department of Public Works has confirmed extensive misuse of public funds within its ranks – at a media briefing last week, Minister Thulas Nxesi said that investigations had uncovered a shocking R35-billion in wasteful expenditure, some of it going back 13 years. Public Works (DPW) is responsible for managing the accommodation needs of government Read more >

HEROES & ZEROES

Creecy to investigate improper procurement

We often read reports of government leaders not taking the findings and recommendations of public service watchdogs seriously. Gauteng MEC of finance, Barbara Creecy is changing that perception, hopefully with positive results in sight. This week she announced during the tabling of her department’s annual report that officials in her department would be investigated with Read more >

HEROES & ZEROES

Staff turnover costs money

We have another zero this week – this time it’s those government departments who, according to a recent Mail & Guardian study, waste millions of rands of taxpayers’ money on senior civil servants who are being paid for early termination of their contracts. The M&G reports that up to R44-million a year could potentially be Read more >

HEROES & ZEROES

Gordhan cracks the whip

Blacklisting of rogue municipal employees? This may very well become the reality in the future if a “back to basics” plan for local government, punted by minister of cooperative governance and traditional affairs (Cogta) Pravin Gordhan, works out. The blacklists would carry a term of 10 years, during which the employees involved would be barred Read more >