2024-01-30 13:16:18
Corruption has reached its worst level in a dozen years in South Africa, where general elections are scheduled in the coming months, joining countries where corruption has “entrenched” and may “spread”, according to a published report Tuesday by the NGO Transparency International.
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The anti-corruption NGO publishes the Corruption Perception Index in 180 countries every year, assessing its level in the public sector as perceived by experts and the business world.
“South Africa has never scored this low” since Transparency International’s local arm, Corruption Watch, began its work 12 years ago in the country now categorized as “democracies with gaps,” underlines the NGO.
“South Africa now joins countries around the world where corruption appears not only entrenched, but capable of spreading,” she adds in her report.
“It is frustrating that in a country where the corrupt have been exposed through public processes such as the Zondo commission and through robust media investigations, so few parties have been brought to justice,” said Karam Singh of Corruption watch.
Judge Raymond Zondo headed the commission of inquiry into rampant corruption during former President Jacob Zuma’s nine years in power (2009-2018) for four years. In 2022, he delivered damning conclusions drawn from more than 400 days of hearings where more than 300 witnesses appeared.
President Cyril Ramaphosa, called to testify before the commission, has repeatedly promised to crack down on corruption. But no arrests have been announced at this stage.
Corruption cases are also one of the elements explaining the loss of ground in the polls of the historic party in power since the end of apartheid, the ANC.
Spattered by scandals and in a gloomy socio-economic context, the African National Congress risks according to opinion polls losing its parliamentary majority, for the first time in its history, during the next elections which are to be held between May and August .
South Africans will go to the polls to renew their national and provincial parliaments, with this vote paving the way for the election of the next president, appointed by national legislators and not by direct universal suffrage.
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