Our giant inflatable website bearing the message “Guptas fly, government jumps” first popped up on Jan Smuts road yesterday afternoon and today, commuters and passers-by at Baragwanath Taxi Rank got to see it along with Corruption Watch crew, who were there to hand out flyers about the organisation and how the public can use our various communication channels to report their incidents of corruption.
Tomorrow, (24 May) we’ll be at UJ’s Bunting Campus from 11:30am – 2:30pm at the ampitheatre outside the student centre and on Saturday (25 May) we’ll be at Soweto’s Maponya Mall from 9am – 12 noon.
“The first of our activation campaigns is entitled “Air Gupta” and aims to empower and mobilise South Africans in the fight against corruption,” says Corruption Watch director David Lewis.
“If senior public figures can be influenced to act in contravention of the law simply because powerful names are dropped, we need to take bold and innovative steps to increase our understanding of corruption.” Read our press release on the Guptagate here.
In the tradition of activist organisations like Greenpeace and Peta, Corruption Watch is also using street theatre to bring home the message.
The public can look out for Air Gupta hostesses at various locations around Johannesburg, who will hand out “Guptas fly, government jumps” flyers in the form of paper airplanes. The flyers urge citizens to become “real high-flyers” by reporting corruption.
Corruption Watch got the idea for the inflatable computer when news broke of the “over-inflated” R48-million deal for developing an integrated website system for the Free State government. This theme has been incorporated into our latest Bra Tjotjo clip too, which you can watch here.
Would you like to become an agent of change? Show support for this campaign by liking the Corruption Watch facebook page and the Bra Tjo-Tjo series on our YouTube channel.
Through this campaign we hope to triple the number of corruption reports via our website and the SMS hotline 45142. You can also follow us on Twitter: @corruption_sa
