Corruption: Prevention & Systemic Change Better Than Waiting Game
Cops and Prosecutors Overwhelmed With Cases - With Little Resources
One of my frustrations is the amount of time it takes to prosecute commercial crimes in South Africa, especially corruption. A corruption scandal that breaks on 3 March 2025 will likely only see convictions in 2031 if we are lucky.
It’s outrageous!
Consider the case of Venda Building Society Mutual Bank, otherwise known as VBS. The scandal broke about 7years ago. The former Chief Financial Officer of the bank, Phillip Truter, confessed and was sentenced to 10years imprisonment as part of a plea bargain. He has since been released on parole. His partners in crime are only now on trial!
So far, about seven people have been convicted with 30 still to either complete or be put on trial. If we assume that some will appeal, if convicted, then we are looking at prison sentences that will only take effect in years to come. This sort of thing is dispiriting because it gives the impression that the government is not serious about fighting corruption.
We want to see swift justice! We want to see people in orange overalls in the shortest possible time.
Investigations Take Time
National Director of Public Prosecutions, Adv. Shameela Batohi takes a lot of flak for this, and people are correct to look in her direction. The National Prosecuting Authority’s (NPA) mandate is to secure justice on behalf of the people, so it makes sense for people to look at their constitutionally mandated fighter to deliver.
But last year (2024) she, Lt.-General Lebeya the Hawks and Adv. Andy Mothibi of the Special Investigations Unit (SIU) appeared before the Standing Committee on Public Accounts (SCOPA) in parliament to shed more light on why it takes so long to prosecute corruption cases.
The problems are many. For example, the SIU is directed by law to refer all potential prosecutions to the NPA. The SIU is not a criminal investigation unit, so they do not put together a prosecution-ready docket. However, they do a great job of recovering stolen government money in way shorter time than it would take to prosecute a case and then secure the forfeiture of assets. This is one of the reasons I really appreciate their work.
They pursue civil litigation which has a lower burden of proof than it takes to secure a criminal conviction. For example, a paper trail may be enough to secure a financial recovery if it shows that a contract was irregularly awarded, was too expensive and the work done was shoddy.
A Hawks investigator on the other hand needs the above information but also statements from multiple witnesses. For example, it is not enough to have an email that instructs a person to do one or other thing. That person has to deposit a sworn statement confirming that the email address is theirs, that they indeed received the email, and then detailing what they subsequently did.
Another witness may submit a statement saying that they received a phone call on such and such a date, and what the content of the email was. If they told another colleague about the phone call, that colleague must also deposit a statement confirming what they were told by the one who received the call.
All these people, including whoever met a supplier at some restaurant, need to appear as witnesses in court after being rigorously prepared for testimony by a prosecutor. So, an SIU file that was 8 000 pages long can expand to 120 000 pages of statements, phone records, transcripts of recordings, credit card slips at restaurants, bank statements etc.
For example, the Hawks told SCOPA last year that they are investigating 264 cases referred to them by the SIU via the NPA, on which they had taken 2 884 statements up to that point. These are in addition to the information already provided to them by the SIU, which is extremely helpful towards their investigations.
This is painstaking work that, if an investigator is working on 7 cases at the same time, may take years.
Problems Deepen
Although in the context of South Africa’s unemployment and poverty, a police officer earns good income, police specialist salaries are just nowhere near what is needed to compete with other sectors, even within government.
For example, the SIU’s salary structure is independent of the public service, so they can almost double the salary of a forensic accountant that works for the SAPS. When a specialist resigns in the middle of investigations, the new person effectively starts from scratch as they must familiarise themselves with the investigating officer and the entire case.
Police investigators get lucrative offers from forensic and auditing firms at salary levels that are impossible for the public service to counter.
This leads to delays and mistakes. It is also difficult to attract good people to such roles when salaries are so modest, so you get high vacancy rates. For example, Lt.-General Lebeya told SCOPA that the Hawks had more than 30 specialist resignations just in the month preceding his appearance in parliament last year.
The NPA is similarly situated, with similar problems encountered.
Ballooning Costs Nonetheless
Despite the poor salaries, paying top dollar for critical forensic skills still happens, just inefficiently in my view. For example, the NPA sometimes has to higher forensic specialists to work on a case and pay them consulting rates which are far above what a permanent employee would get. And they work on just one case!
This is one of the issues I am going to work with SCOPA members, and other portfolio committees (Justice and Police) to resolve. There must be a scarce skills dispensation that enables the SAPS, Hawks and NPA to hire highly experienced and skilled forensic investigators. It is just not enough to shout at the people who head these agencies without offering a solution.
Systemic Reform
I think we clearly have corruption on a grand scale. One of the things Adv. Batohi told our committee was that prevention remains the best cure in the fight against corruption. She is correct. We cannot take pride in acting AFTER money has been stolen because people’s lives get affected in real time.
The arrest and conviction of someone guilty of corruption does not restore a clinic that could have been built to service South Africans, so prevention is even more important. But that requires that we make systemic changes, not just one intervention.
For example, Eskom shared with our committee how they are going to use technology to reduce tender corruption. For example, procurement officials will, in most cases, not have the ability to choose service providers. They will populate the system with the tender requirements, and it will produce a shortlist from registered vendors.
The system will then do bid evaluations on its own and eventually appoint a suitable supplier. This is obviously for a certain classification of contracts where something called “order-splitting” is rife – that is officials who use their discretion to award multiple small contracts to the same supplier so that they do not require an open tender.
This is but one way in which systemic changes can be made to reduce corruption. If proven to be successful, this same system can be applied across the entire government, saving taxpayers billions.
This would eventually reduce the caseload investigators and prosecutors have which results from unchecked corruption in nearly every government institution. I am personally determined to ensure that the system Eskom uses is used elsewhere. Now that will be systemic change and an effective way of fighting corruption!
Ends.
Songezo Zibi is the National Leader of Rise Mzansi and a Member of Parliament. He is the Chairman of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts (Scopa). He is the author of several books on politics, the political economy and history.