Posts

Nkandla in the wind

Source: The Economist “I am often asked by people from India and Russia, ‘Why do you worry?’”, says David Lewis, head of Corruption Watch, a privately funded watchdog based in Johannesburg. Why indeed? South Africa sits in the middle of international rankings of corruption. It is not Sweden but nor is it Zimbabwe. It has Read more >

Department learns corruption lessons

Corruption Watch recently met representatives of the Free State department of basic education in Bloemfontein to discuss the organisation's work to stop corruption in schools in the province. In the past year, following the launch of its schools-focused campaign, Corruption Watch has received hundreds of reports containing allegations of corruption in public schools from all Read more >

Little effort by SA to prosecute acts of foreign bribery

By Valencia Talane South Africa is not doing enough to bring to book individuals and companies linked to acts of bribery involving foreign companies and governments. Furthermore, the country’s “political and economic considerations” are thought to be contributing to this worrying state of affairs. This was recently revealed by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Read more >

New e-book focuses on procurement corruption

Corruption in government procurement processes is a major concern amongst South Africans, as it results in billions of rands of the national budget going down the drain. Many citizens have decided to do something about it – between our launch in January 2012 to the end of January 2014, we have received 465 reports related Read more >

Economic crime plagues local business

As a nation, South Africa has many attractive features – and a few undesirable ones too. A fresh survey by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) reveals a few of the latter – bribery and corruption, procurement fraud, cybercrime, insider trading, and more. Titled the 2014 Global Economic Crime Survey, it unpacks economic crime in the country, and was Read more >

The arms deal: what you need to know

Browse the mini-site: What is the arms deal? What equipment was bought? When did it all go down? Who were the people involved? Allegations of corruption What is the Seriti Commission? Useful resources Updates and analysis Formally known as the Strategic Defence Package, the arms deal, to use its notorious nickname, was a multi-billion-rand military Read more >

Help make our voice count!

A Corruption Watch idea, involving online citizen activism against corruption, is one of 196 that have made it through to the public voting round in the annual Making All Voices Count global innovation competition. Check it out here and vote for our idea – there are two weeks left! South Africa is one of 12 countries Read more >

CPI 2013 – South Africa in the African context

Transparency International (TI) has launched its annual corruption perceptions index, and South Africa has not improved noticeably on its score of 43 and ranking of 69 for 2012. Last year the country dropped two places on the sub-Saharan Africa rankings, from seven to nine, and this year it drops another place to 10. The index Read more >

Thin blue line broken

By Kavisha Pillay The Global Corruption Barometer, released by Transparency International (TI) in July, revealed that South Africans viewed the police service as the most corrupt institution in the country. A staggering 83 percent of respondents had this perception of the police, and of the 74 percent of respondents who came into contact with a police official Read more >