The Council for the Advancement of the South African Constitution (CASAC) welcomes the initiatives announced by Minister Pravin Gordhan in the Budget today to tackle the scourge of corruption. These initiatives focus mainly on procurement and supply chain management in the public sector, and include a number of mechanisms to prevent corruption.

While they will certainly strengthen the arsenal in the fight against corruption, CASAC believes that corruption also needs to be tackled from the supply side and that emphasis should also be placed on dealing with miscreants in the private sector. We reiterate the call for a dedicated, independent anti-corruption agency to confront this evil in our midst. Such a body should have a triple focus of investigating, preventing and educating the public about corruption. It needs to be adequately resources and forge links with civil society bodies active in the campaigns against corruption.

Sipho Pityana, chairperson of CASAC says:

“We have written to the Minister of Justice expressing our concern that there has been no indication from Government of how it intends to deal with the judgment of the Constitutional Court in the Glenister case. The Court suspended its ruling that the Hawks were not a sufficiently independent agency and gave Parliament 18 months to remedy the defects in the legislation. There are only seven months left for Parliament to meet this deadline and we believe that any further delay on the part of Government in tabling corrective legislation will seriously undermine the process of public engagement in this regard.”

We trust that Government will further demonstrate its commitment to effectively fighting corruption by tabling legislation that will establish an independent anti-corruption agency which addresses the concerns raised by the Constitutional Court in Glenister.

We strongly endorse Minister Gordhan’s call on all South Africans not to accept bribery and corruption. As CASAC we have made the call for our citizens and sectors of society to ‘red card corruption’. We need to develop a renewed ethos in both the public and private sectors that puts integrity, honesty and Ubuntu at the forefront of our way of life.

Lawson Naidoo
Council for the Advancement of the South African Constitution.