Latest MPs’ register of interests not yet in sight

Parliament’s Joint Committee on Ethics and Members’ Interests recently set a closing date of Friday, 29 September 2017, for all members of Parliament (MPs) to disclose their business and financial interests. The Code of Ethical Conduct and Disclosure of Members’ Interests defines such interests as registrable interests, and MPs are required to make annual disclosures. Read more >

All our correspondence in the Sars matter

Corruption Watch has written to the parliamentary standing committee on finance to request that, as the body that exercises oversight in respect of the South African Revenue Service (Sars), it urgently inquires into the secretive processes followed by Sars that have resulted in Jonas Makwakwa being cleared of all wrongdoing and returning to work. Makwakwa is alleged Read more >

How does money laundering work?

Money launderers make use of numerous twists and turns in their efforts to hide their trails, but how does the process really happen? Here’s how. Money laundering is exactly what the words describe – washing the ill-gotten gains of their illegal origins so that what is left cannot easily be traced back to the original Read more >

How to keep humanitarian aid out of corrupt hands

Earthquakes and hurricanes devastating parts of Mexico and the Caribbean; flooding in Bangladesh, India, Nepal, and Pakistan affecting more than 41-million people; refugee crises in Syria and Myanmar; protracted crises in Afghanistan, Chad and the Central African Republic; and more than 20-million people facing starvation and famine across Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan and Yemen in Read more >

African leaders loot with same fervour as colonialists

Corruption is well-entrenched in Africa, and those few leaders who have decided to actively tackle it – beyond just talking about tackling it – have publicly admitted that the task is a lot harder than they expected. Last year’s Panama Papers breakthrough revealed the names of numerous African politicians and their friends and families, who Read more >

Mbalula: we have a problem with SAPS leadership

Police minister Fikile Mbalula today presented the 2016/2017 crime statistics to the parliamentary portfolio committee on police. The statistics cover the period from 1 April 2016 to 31 March 2017. This means that at best, the stats are over six months old. Mbalula acknowledged that there is a problem of poor leadership in the South Read more >

The real police numbers behind SA’s high crime rate

As the South African Police Service (SAPS) prepares to release South Africa’s annual crime statistics, Corruption Watch and the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) have released numbers that highlight the challenges of police leadership in a country with endemic crime and violence. This is part of a campaign to change the way South Africa’s top Read more >

CW makes parly submissions on political party funding

This week Corruption Watch made written submissions to the parliamentary ad hoc committee on the funding of political parties, on the draft Political Party Funding Bill of 2017. We expressed concerns mainly around the continued lack of transparency in the private finding of parties. Transparency in party funding prevents and deters corruption and malfeasance, and Read more >

Civil society must rise to the occasion

Civil society organisations (CSOs) come in many forms, some informal and some formal. The latter include non-governmental organisations, community based organisations, or faith-based organisations, among others. They represent a group of individuals who come together for a common purpose, as in to fulfil a particular mandate driven by need. In a policy brief titled Strengthening Read more >