By David Lewis - Director: Corruption Watch

THEORY IN PRACTICE

By David Lewis - Director: Corruption Watch

Are we securing the imposition of criminal and disciplinary sanctions against individuals engaged in corruption? And if not, are we raising the risk of engaging in corruption? And if not, are we contributing to limiting the incidence of corruption?

We do not have prosecutorial powers nor, are we employers of the individual perpetrators and so we are unable to directly exact disciplinary or criminal sanctions. But we do have the ability to punish corruption through the operation of the political process. This capacity includes pressure on those with political power to exact criminal and disciplinary consequences.

Our theory of change effectively assumes that South Africa is a functioning democracy, however imperfect. In democracies public voice counts. As our media figures verify we have made a major contribution to raising the volume and improving the quality of public voice.

The response bears out our theory of change. At the most general level, currently every important statement made by our political leadership incorporates an attempt to burnish the individual’s or the political party’s credentials in fighting corruption. This response and the new measures introduced, however cynical, set up increasingly higher standards against which public service is measured.

Moreover, the response by public officials to our queries, recommendations and demands has improved substantially including the convening of enquiries and disciplinary proceedings, the voiding of contracts and, on one occasion, the proffering of criminal charges.

These reactions may appear to be relatively few in number (they are) and pursued with palpable reluctance (they generally are). However they are sufficient to tell us , that what is required is more of the same; that is, if with 8000 reports of corruption and our current levels of media coverage we are able to achieve present levels of influence and pressure, that we would achieve commensurately more with 80000 reports and a significant surge in our media and outreach activity.

However we are actively engaging in, and exploring other, more direct forms of pressure aimed at securing the imposition of disciplinary and criminal sanctions. For example:

• We are actively engaged in defending, including through engaging in litigation, the Public Protector;
• We are actively engaged in exposing the causes and consequences of the chronic instability at the leadership levels of our principal ant-corruption policing and prosecutorial bodies;
• We have actively supported the new Public Administration Act, particularly the introduction of a unit designed to strengthen public sector institutional capacity to discipline perpetrators of corruption;
• We have appeared as an amicus curia in the Constitutional Court and have secured a judgment that will materially ease the burden of investigating corruption allegations;
• We are actively engaged in reviewing our investigation strategy. In particular we are going to outsource to private investigation firms and free-lance journalists our field-work investigation retaining and strengthening our in-house forensic capacity.