PRESS RELEASE
President Cyril Ramaphosa, in a wide-ranging interview yesterday with EWN’s political journalist Tshidi Madia and 702’s Clement Manyathela, made the claim that “commentators like Corruption Watch (CW) have said that during this term, they have seen incidents of corruption going down.”
The president made this statement in the context of listing his administration’s anti-corruption “successes” and institutional reforms.
CW refutes the president’s statement and objects to being referenced in this way as part of an electioneering campaign. The organisation emphasises that the number of reports it receives or the research it does is in no way a conclusive overview of the entire corruption situation in South Africa but is merely one facet of the whole.
CW recently issued an opinion piece on this very issue of mis- and disinformation being used for political ends, titled Elections and the Dirty Game of Disinformation. The article makes clear the ways in which organisations with strong anti-corruption profiles, such as CW, can find their names and information being misused to peddle narratives that are self-serving and which lack credibility. It references a specific example in which an X user distorted figures and content from the 2023 annual report, presenting this disinformation as having been generated by CW, with the aim of demonstrating that corruption cases had dropped during the current administration.
“There are many factors at play when we speak about reports and trends of corruption in South Africa,” says Karam Singh, executive director of CW. “While the number of reports received by our organisation may have declined in recent years, this is in no way a reflection of either the state of corruption in the country, or the progress in fighting it. On the contrary, it would be safe to say that the levels of corruption have been on an upward trajectory for over a decade, as evidenced in tools such as the Corruption Perceptions Index, and that despite the numerous organisations and institutions now doing their best to tackle the problem, the battle has not been won.”
CW takes seriously its role as an independent anti-corruption civil society organisation and will continue to be vigilant in debunking messages of this nature that attempt to distort its work and co-opt its name for political gain.
For media enquiries contact:
Oteng Makgotlwe
Cell: 076 473 8336 E-mail: OtengM@corruptionwatch.org.za
