Political Corruption in South Africa (History) - Tom Lodge

Political Corruption in South Africa
Author(s): Tom Lodge

Source: African Affairs , Apr., 1998, Vol. 97, No. 387 (Apr., 1998), pp. 157-187
Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of The Royal African Society
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/723262
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African Affairs (1998), 97, 157-187
POLITICAL CORRUPTION IN
SOUTH AFRICA
TOM LODGE
ABSTRACT
Public opinion suggests that political corruption is entrenched in South
Africa. Comparative experience does not indicate that the historical
South African political environment was especially likely to nurture a
venal bureaucracy; as a fairly industrialized and extremely coercive state
the apartheid order may have been less susceptible to many of the forms of
political corruption analysts have associated with other post-colonial
developing countries. Democratization has made government less
secret, inhibiting corruption in certain domains but through extending
government's activities opening up possibilities for abuse in others.
Today's authorities argue that the present extent of corruption is largely
inherited and indeed certain government departments, notably those
concerned with security and the homelands, as well as the autonomous
homeland administrations themselves, had a history of routine official
misbehaviour. After describing the distribution and nature of corruption
in South African public administration this article concludes that a
substantial proportion of modern corruption occurs in regional adminis-
trations and certainly embodies a legacy from the homeland civil
services. A major source of financial misappropriation in the old central
government, secret defence procurement, no longer exists but corruption
is stimulated by new official practices and fresh demands imposed upon
the bureaucracy including discriminatory tendering, political solidarity,
and the expansion of citizen entitlements. Though much contemporary
corruption is inherited from the past, the simultaneous democratization
and restructuring of the South African state makes it very vulnerable to
new forms of abuse in different locations.
MANY PEOPLE BELIEVE that widespread political cortuption exists in South

Africa. In a survey published by IDASA in 1996, 46 percent of the sample
consulted felt that most ofiicials were engaged in corruption and only six
percent believed there was clean government. 1 In another poll conducted
by the World Value Survey, 15 percent of the respondents were certain that
all public servants were guilty of bribery and corruption and another 30 per-
cent thought that most officials were venal.2 The IDASA survey indicated
that 41 percent of the sample felt that public corruption was increasing.
Most recently, Transparency International, an international monitoring
Tom Lodge is a Professor in the Department of Political Studies, University of the
Witwatersrand.
1. IDASA Public Opinion Service, POS Reports, No. 3, February 1996, 'Parliamentary
Ethics and Government Corruption: Playing with Public Trust'.
2. Summary Report of World Value Sur?vey: South Afrzca, 1996, pp. 37-41.
157

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158 AFRICAN AFFAIRS
agency, has reported on a survey which confirms a growing perception

among foreign businessmen that official corruption in South Africa is
widespread.3 These perceptions have probably been stimulated by the
proliferation of press reports on corruption as well as debates between
national politicians. They are, of course, unreliable indicators of the scope
or seriousness of administrative venality except in so far as the existence of
such beliefs can encourage corrupt transactions between officials and
citizens. In reviewing the South African evidence this paper will attempt
to answer four questions. Is the present South African political environ-
ment peculiarly susceptible to corruption? Were previous South African
administrations especially corrupt? What forms has political corruption
assumed since 1994 and how serious has been its incidence? Finally, does
modern South African corruption mainly represent habits inherited from
the past or is it a manifestation of new kinds of behaviour?
There is general agreement about what constitutes political corruption.
It is the 'unsanctioned or unscheduled use of public resources for private
ends'.4 It might take the form of 'misperformance or neglect of a
recognized duty, or the unwarranted exercise of power, with the motive of
gaining some advantage more or less directly personal'.5 Political corrup-
tion can be described as 'a method of exploitation by which a constituent
part of the public order sphere is exploited as if it were part of the market
sphere'.6 Broader definitions of public corruption also embrace electoral
fraud as well as the rewarding by political parties of specific constituencies
in retum for electoral support ('transactive cortuption') but here we will be
concerned only with those transactions which are motivated by individuals
seeking material benefits. Political corruption is located within the
institutions of government: legislatures, courts, bureaucracies and statutory
bodies such as parastatal corporations or commissions. It is constituted
by transactions or exchanges of public resources and benefits between
actors some or all of whom are officials or public representatives. It must
involve acts which are intentionally dishonest.
Most writers on corruption distinguish between degrees of severity of
corruption both with reference to where it occurs as well as its
pervasiveness. Different administrations may be characterized by routine,
3. Transparency International Corruption Perception Index, 1997, press release, Johannesburg,

31 July 1997. This agency collates the results of at least four surveys of perceptions with
respect to 52 countries to construct a ranking. South Africa's score out of 10 00 slipped from
5-68 to 4 95 between 1996 and 1997 locating it at 33rd position, between Malaysia and South
Korea. Between 1980 and 1985 similar surveys had given South Africa a score of 7 35. See
Ross Herbert, 'SA "least corrupt country" in Africa', The Star, 10 June 1996.
4. Victor Levine, Political Corruption: The Ghana case (Stanford University Press, 1975).
5. Robert C. Brooks, 'The nature of political corruption', in Arnold J. Heidenheimer (ed.),
Political Corruption: Readings in comparative analysis (Holt, Reinhart and Winston, New York,
1 970) .
6. Jacob van Klaveren, 'The Concept of Corruption', in Heidenheimer (ed.), Political
Corruption, p. 38.

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POLITICAL CORRUPTION IN SOUTH AFRICA 159
petty or low level bureaucratic corruption (for example, the habitual extor-
tion of bribes by minor officials) and grand corruption (the large scale
misuse of public resources by senior civil servants and politicians) or by
both simultaneously.7 Corruption becomes systemic when corrupt ac-
tivity begins to appear at all levels within a political system and when it
becomes repetitious, constituting a parallel set of procedures to those which
properly constitute the formal fianctions of the bureaucracy. Routine and
open petty corruption usually signifies a systemic condition of corruption;
secretive grand corruption may exist despite the absence of more pervasive
bureaucratic misbehaviour. In administrations in which corruption as-
sumes systemic and epidemic forms the scale of misappropriation sub-
stantially reduces public expenditure on development and services. For
example in India in the 1950s a government commission established that
about five percent of the money spent during the Second Five Year Plan
was misappropriated,8 in the Philippines in the 1970s about 20 percent of
internal revenue was lost through corruption,9 in Nigeria estimates for the
total of public corruption suggest a figure equalling 10 percent of the
country's GDP,10 and in Zaire, the total of 'venal drainage' during
the 1 970s may have equalled the national debt, $5 billion, by 1980; both at
the time, taken together, would have represented a quarter of the official
gross national product.ll Certain authorities have argued that corruption
may have beneficial developmental effects, especially in those cases in
which formal bureaucratic controls obstruct entrepreneurial growth, but
such instances usually involve the grandiose corruption of senior officials
in exchange for subverting tender procedures rather than routine petty
venality which is generally agreed to be developmentally harmfill.l2
7. Robert Theobold, 'Lancing the swollen African state: will it alleviate the problem of
corruption?', 3fournal of Modern African Studies, 32, 4 (1994) pp. 701-706.
8. David Bayley, 'The effects of corruption in developing nations', in Heidenheimer (ed.),
Political Corruption.
9. Robert Klitgaard, Controlling Corruption (University of California Press, Berkeley, 1988),
p. 20.
1 o. The Economist, 21 August, 1996.
11. Crawford Young and Thomas Turner, The Rise and the Decline of the Zairean State
(University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, 1985), pp. 401-402.
12. See Nathanial Leff, 'Economic development through corruption', in Heidenheimer
Political Corruption. J. S. Nye 'Corruption and political development: a cost benefit analysis',
American Political Science Reviezv, 56 (1967); and M. Beenstock, 'Corruption and develop-
ment', World Development, 7, 1 (1979). Most developmental arguments favouring corruption
suggest that the corrupt exchanges may result in better economic decisions as well as
promoting efficiency through by-passing bureaucratic control systems; additionally they may
channel capital into investment rather than consumption. Another beneficial effect of
political corruption may be that it can enhance social stability: one study of Japan suggests that
constituency-based patronage systems have resulted in generous levels of public investment in
rural areas; see Jan Marie Bouissou, 'Gift networks and clientalism in Japan as a redistributive
system', in Donnatella Della Porta and Yves Meny (eds.), Democracy and Corruption In Europe
(Pinter, London, 1997).

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160 AFRICAN AFFAIRS
Political corruption is often perceived to be especially characteristic of

government in developing countries.l3 For Robert Klitgaard it 'probably
constitutes one of the three or four most harmful problems facing third
world government'.l4 Samuel Huntington has argued that its presence
'correlates with rapid social and economic modernisation'.l5 There ar
several reasons for believing this. In countries in which large scal
centralized bureaucratic administrations are fairly recent and imposed by
outsiders there may exist a 'wide divergence between the aims, attitudes
and methods of the government and those of the societies in which they
operate'.l6 In such contexts patrimonial values which arise from th
persistence in social relationships of kinship, clanship and clientship may
infuse bureaucracy from below.l7 Modernization can enlarge government
very swiftly, widening its scope of intervention and regulation well beyond
the capacity and supply of properly trained personnel and the accompany-
ing expansion of functions and services 'multiplies opportunities for
corruption'.l8 Obviously this situation is accentuated if experienced offi-
cials are replaced with junior functionaries or with bureaucratic neophytes
as often happens in rapidly implemented programmes of indigenization
following independence. The pressure to recruit civil servants en masse
may be particularly intense following extensive political mobilization and
the construction of huge armies of political party employees during the
decolonization period. Cases of extreme corruption often correlate with
situations in which the state derives the majority of its revenues from
external sources of easily controlled enclaves within the national economy:
African states' dependence upon customs receipts, foreign aid, and state
controlled monopolies in such commodities as oil or diamonds, exploited
under very restrictive conditions, are all cases in point. Each of these
represent weak imperatives for domestic fiscal accountability and facilitate
elite venality. In developing countries the state is usually the major force
within the modern economy and in general conditions of economic scarcity
and low levels of social stratification political and bureaucratic power
brings unprecedented opportunities for control over material resources; in
such circumstances, political office becomes the main route to personal
13. J. C. Bekker, 'Nepotism, corruption and discrimination: A predicament for a post

apartheid South African public service', Politikon, 18, 2 (1991).
14. Klitgaard, Controlling Corruption.
15. Samuel Huntington, 'Modernisation and corruption', in Heidenheimer, Political
Corruption, p. 490.
16. M. McMullen, 'A Theory of Corruption', Sociological Review, 1961, p. 184.
17. Theobold, 'Lancing the swollen African state'.
18. See, for example: Paul Wellings, 'Making a fast buck: capital leakage and public
accounts in Lesotho', African Affairs, 82, 329, (1983); also K. Gillespie and G. Okruhlik, 'The
political dimensions of corruption clean-ups: a framework for analysis', Comparative Politics,
24, 1 (1991), p. 78.

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wealth.19 Accordingly, relatively low levels of official corruption in, for

example, Botswana, are attributable to the existence of an indigenous
ruling class which acquired its wealth before it became ascendent in
national politics.20 Similarly, the more widespread corruption in commu-
nist countries in comparison to liberal democracies is explained by the
difficulty in the former of maintaining moral and conceptual distinctions
between private and public property and individual and collective
interests.2l Recently, though, a succession of political scandals in
well established industrial democracies have helped to shift the focus of
corruption studies away from the developing world. Three political
developments which have simultaneously affected both mature industrial
democracies and poor third world countries are believed to have promoted
corrupt government: the decentralization of administration and with it the
delegation of financial authority; the introduction of market values into
public administration; and the growing costs of political competition in
party systems in which political organizations increasingly depend upon
external sources of finance.22
As well as these historical or contextual causes of corruption, a series of
features associated with particular kinds of polities help to erlcourage the
proliferation of political corruption. These include: bureaucratic secrecy
and the absence of mutual surveillance procedures by government
agencies; protracted rule by one political party or an ageing one party
dominant system; administrative inefficiency and complicated hierarchical
decision-making procedures which create lengthy delays; and extensive
patterns of political appointment in the civil service. Finally, popular
suppositions about the existence of generalized corruption can encourage
the spread of political corruption even if such beliefs initially exaggerate its
extent and character.
South African susceptibility

Do these generalizations which arise from comparative studies suggest
that post-apartheid South Africa may be particularly susceptible to political
corruption? Ostensibly, South Africa may not seem to share the structural
predisposition towards corruption which many authorities believe makes
the condition endemic in other African countries. South Africa is not a
typical 'developing country' nor is its current experience of socio-economic
and political change easily encapsulated by notions of modernization.
Compared to many former colonial territories the state plays a minor, albeit
19. Jean-Francois Bayart, The State in Africa: the politics of the belly (Longman, London,
1 993) .
20. Kenneth Good, 'Interpreting the exceptionality of Botswana', 3rournal of Modern African
Studies, 30, 1 (1992), p. 72.
21. Leslie Holmes, The End of Communist Pozver (Polity Press, Cambridge, 1993).
22. Donatella Della Porta and Yves Meny (eds.), Democracy and Corruption In Europe
(Pinter, London, 1997).

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162 AFRICAN AFFAIRS
an important, role in the economy and it by no means provides the main

path for economic accumulation. In contrast to newly independent
countries, the government of newly democratic South Africa is attempting
to contract or at least stabilize public sector expenditure and employment,
and the political pressures which result from large scale unemployment are
not as compelling as those which confronted other African governments
aher decolonization. In contrast to colonial administrations the apartheid
state was relatively effective and comparatively efficient and undertook a
considerable range of social welfare fimctions. South African relative
immunity from corruption is also suggested by those studies which contend
that a particular historical sequence of state development in which mod-
ernization of the state, the development of welfare functions and the
extension of the franchise occur consecutively and are separated by quite
lengthy periods tends to produce less corrupt administrations than states in
which these developments occur simultaneously.23 Arguably, state forma-
tion during a long period of white political monopolies made it more
difficult than elsewhere in Africa for the state to be influenced by the
persistence of old pre-industrial cultures of tribute. Finally the South
African state has for a long time depended for major sources of its revenues
on various forms of personal taxation-even within the restricted democ-
racy of white minority politics this helped to limit the scope of official
misbehaviour.
Has democratization weakened or strengthened corrupt predispositions
in South African government? The theoretical and comparative insights
referred to above indicate a complicated answer to this question. The
formation of nine regional governments has been accompanied by a
delegation downwards of certain areas of budgetary authority and this may
have interfered with previous controls though this may be compensated for
by the dissolution of homelands in which administrative corruption was
sometimes endemic.24 On the other hand, the incorporation into regional
administrations of homeland civil services may merely have transferred the
bureaucratic location of corrupt behaviour and made regional governments
vulnerable to the patrimonial politics which affected certain homeland
administrations. Though the overall number of civil servants has not
altered significantly in certain departments and regional governments large
23. Andrew Adonis, 'The UK: Civic virtue put to the test', in Porta and Meny, Democracy
and Comaption in Europe.
24. For example, the Housing Amendment Act of 1996 allowed provincial governments to
accredit municipal governments to administer housing subsidies, while making provincial
housing boards accountable to the provincial housing MEC rather than the national
minister. Intended as a procedural chain of 103 decisions governing housing construction
the Act disperses executive authority to local governments, notorious for their financial
inefficiency; see Jovial Rantao, 'Backlog blamed on 103 decisions for every house', The Star,
28 February 1997, and Maggie Rowley, 'Housing Bill outlines systems to hasten delivery', The
Star, 20 March 1996.

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numbers of senior officials have been replaced and many of the fresh
recruits to senior managerial levels have been political appointments.25
This, together with the demoralization and fears about job insecurity
amongst officials employed by the pre- 1994 administration may have
helped to erode professional ethics.26 These in any case have been under
attack with the adoption of new management policies which are highly
critical of 'authoritarian, centralised and rule bound' operations and seek to
replace them with an organizational culture 'with a new emphasis on
communicating, consulting, supporting, motivating and directing' and
directed towards 'the satisfaction of needs, both of the public and of
staff'.27 Though the White Paper on public service transformation
stresses accountability and anti-corruption measures the new policies
require a new range of managerial skills and quite different control
systems. Meanwhile the government is undertaking a range of new
activities, extending welfare and development services and establishing a
set of new statutory bodies to safeguard constitutional rights. All these
present new challenges for financial regulation. Government policies
which favour black business empowerment and the movement of members
of the ANC leadership into the corporate sector may have also helped to
promote a culture in which 'public behaviour is less prized than private,
(and) producing results comes to matter more than observing standards,
monetary values more than ethical and symbolic values'.28 On the other
hand, the new government's public commitment to an ethic of transpar-
ency and the institution of the office of the Public Protector, as well as the
appointment of a number of official inquiries into corruption, has helped to
stimulate a fresh willingness among newspaper editors to publish corrup-
tion stories (which especially in the case of homeland venality used to be
virtually ignored). Moreover, partly as a consequence of affirmative
action policies, government tendering has become more fiercely contested
and more subject to public commentary. In short, a democratic consti-
tution and the demise of racially and ethnically separated administrations
25. By November 1996, 32 percent of management positions and 52 percent of senior

management positions in the civil service were occupied by Africans; in the pre 1994 'core'
civil service Africans had held less than five percent of such positions. Republic of South
Africa, Public Service Commission, Report on the Rationalisation of Public Administration in the
Republic of South Africa, Pretoria, RP/1997, p. 81.
26. A survey undertaken in 1992 by the HSRC of 5,320 members of the Public Service
Association, found that 75 percent of its respondents were worried about reductions of
benefits, that 58 percent believed 'that merit as basis for appointment and promotion would
disappear', 69 percent expected replacement of staff as a result of political appointments, and
that 60 percent 'were not positive' about affirmative action. Most respondents were
Afrikaans speaking, white men, and members of the National Party; see Erwin Schwella,
'Bureaucrats hard to budge', DSA in Depth, August/September 1993, pp. 18-19.
27. Government
Public Service', pp.Gazette,
7, 15. 15 May 1995, 'Draft White Paper on the Transformation of the
28. Yves Meny,

Corraption 'France,
in Europe, p. 18.the end of the republican ethic', in Porta and Meny, Democracy and

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AFRICAN AFFAIRS
164
has considerably expanded the area of government open t

and inspection. This needs to be kept in mind when consi
proliferation of reports of corruption since 1994.
The historical legacy
Government spokesmen argue that contemporary corruption

carry-over from the previous administration. Arguably, a bu
which was deliberately used as an instrument to foster the
economic fortunes of one ethnically defined group had at least
transactive corruption built into its functioning from the in
National Party rule. Deborah Posel, for example, has documen
the Native Affairs Department in the 1950s 'made a concerted effo
as many administrative posts as possible with National Party s
while in the 1 960s Broederbond infiltration of agricultural cooper
the Land Bank ensured that political considerations would pred
credit allocation.29 However these forms of patronage and fa
were mainly geared to the strategic goals of Afrikaner nationalism
did not, at least at their inception, involve personal gain and indivi
relationships.30 As late as the mid 1970s, J. N. Cloete, directo
South African Institute for Public Administration, could maintain
controls in the civil service were so strirlgent that bureaucrats
opportunity to use patronage and the conferment of financial bene
the achievement of improper objectives'.3l This seems to be con
the Auditor-General's reports for the 1950s and early 1960s-th
of financial irregularities documented reached a comparatively mod
in 1967, and were mainly concentrated in the post office, as w
much lesser extents in justice, defence and police. There is pl
evidence, though, to suggest that by the 1980s, political corruption
the terms of che definition used in this paper, was quite common i
government departments as well as in homeland administrati
1978 Information Department scandal featured senior officials usin
fUnds to pay for holidays for their families, tax free supple
allowances, and properties registered in their own names, as w
R13 million loaned to Mr Louis Luyt to start up a newspaper,
which was subsequently invested on one of Luyts compani
Inforlllation scandal arose from the misuse of secret money and m
29. Deborah
Town, 1997),Posel, The243-244.
pp. 117, Making of Apartheid, 1948-1961 (Oxford University P
30. Annette
state', Seegers,
Africa, 'Toward an understanding of the Afrikanerisation of the Sou
63, 4 (1993).
31. J. N. Cloete, 'The Bureaucracy,' in Anthony de Crespigny and Robert Sch

Government and Politics of So7lth Africa Juta, Cape Town, 1978), p. 74.
32. For details see Republic of South Africa, Report of the Commission of InquirCy into the former
Department of Inforrnation, Pretoria, RP/113/1978, pp. 34-60.

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POLITICAL CORRUPTION IN SOUTH AFRICA
165
been exceptional on those grounds but the D

end the practice of secret financial grants to government agencies.
In the 1980s, the flow of secret funding to the Defence Department
accelerated. Within the loose accounting employed in the ifunding of arms
procurement and front companies there was plenty of room for official
venality. In 1994, for example, parliament authorised a R3*7 billion
transfer to the Department of Defence's secret account. A proportion of
this may have been expended on arms, though it is difficult to see why five
years after the close of hostilities in Namibia. South African funded
foreign based procurement agencies were exempt from nor-lllal audits and
certainly provided substantial profits for civilian brokers as well as, poss-
ibly, their military handlers.33 Covert operations inside South Africa
undertaken by the military also supplied plenty of opportunities for private
gain. For example, between 1985 and 1990, R10 million was paid over to
five front companies established by the Eastern Cape Command. The
companies were intended to organize youth camps and leadership training
as well as other propaganda activities directed against the ANC and
PAC. All their equipment became the private property of those in charge
of their management. Whether these bodies actually undertook all the
activities for which they were paid is rather questionable. For example the
military fimded Eagles Youth Clubs in the Orange Free State claimed a
massive membership of 600,000 which justified an annual budget of R1
million. Another military front corporation, Africa Risks Analysis Con-
sultants, issued to its 49 staff Diners Club cards with R25,000 limits,
presumably for the more incidental expenses in analyzing risk. Africa
Communications Projects was a private company run by a military agent,
Nico Basson, who earned his million rand salary through recruiting and
feeding material to SABC and newspaper journalists. He claimed that
R190 million was spent on promoting government propaganda in this
fashion during the Namibian elections.34 Given these huge sums and the
evidently rather trial exercises in which they were supposedly deployed it
seems reasonable to argue that private enrichment constituted a fairly
significant aspect of covert operations. The memoirs of Colonel Jan
Breycenbach, commander of the 32 Battalion and the SADF's most
decorated soldier appear to confirm this. He describes how military
intelligence formed a company, Inter Frama, ostensibly to help generate
33. See report on the David Kofmansky trial: Kit Katzen, 'Mysteries and unanswered
questions aise in the CCB trial', The Star, 22 September 1990. Kofmansky, a Sandton
commodities broker, was charged with the illegal export of R29 million, money he said he had
been given by a Civil Cooperation Bureau operative to establish an arms buying company in
Britain. For further argument on his point see Stephen Ellis, 'Africa and international
corruption: The strange case of South Africa and the Seychelles', African Affairs, 95 (1996),
especially pp. 178-182.
34.South
in Anthony Minaar,
Africa (HSRC,IanPretoria,
Liebenberg,
1994),and
pp.Charl Schutte, The hidden hand: Covert operations
234-338.

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166 AFRICAN AFFAIRS
income for Savimbi. This became a conduit for ivory and mandr
smuggling. Among his various responsibilities, Breytenbach w
appointed park warden to the Rundu reserve in Caprivi. He was d
missed from this post when he discovered that ivory was being hoarded
military intelligence stores under the control of senior officers.35 In 19
the new Office of Serious Economic Offences began an investigation o
transfers of assets which took place when two front companies, Roodepl
Research Laboratories and Delta G, were privatized: the existing manage
ment of these concerns simply assumed ownership of assets as majori
shareholders (in return for payments totalling only R350,000) and lat
managers collected R18 million through liquidating the companies.36
Another area of official secrecy which may have masked extensiv
venality were South African efforts to evade oil sanctions. In 1964, th
Strategic Fuel Fund was set up by the government to institute and mana
a stock-piling programme and to manage an 'equalisation fund' whi
would be used to compensate the oil companies for the extra cost
refining crude in South Africa. The fund became the subject of
parliamentary row in 1984, when the Progressive Federal Party's John
Malcomess suggested that its procurement officials were 'creaming of
something for themselves'. Malcomess argued that the SFF had ma
hundreds of million rands' worth of overpayments. An Attorney
General's investigation concluded that there was no wrongdoing b
Malcomess claimed that it failed to question key people. SFF tolerance
overpayments may have reflected the influence of SASOL executives on i
boards: high prices for foreign oil purchases provided effective protectio
for SASOL's synthetic oil industry.37
Even outside the mysterious world of covert operations, though, centr
government departments seem to have had a history of routinized
corruption. For example, in September 1994 a deputy director in th
Department of Health was suspended for the second time as a consequenc
of his acceptance of a consultancy with a company which supplied foods
prisons: the Van der Watt Commission confirmed that after the award o
the contract in 1989, the official, nutrition specialist Dr Johan Kotze, ha
received nearly R400,000 in various deposits into his bank account from
the company. The allegations had originally come to light in 1991 but
Kotze was reinstated when an initial investigation failed to uneart
definitive proof. A correctional services lieutenant general was also foun
3 5. Jan Breytenbach, Exiles: One soldier's fight for paradise (Quellerie, Johannesburg, 1997)
See also Ros Reeve and Stephen Ellis, 'An insider's account of the South African Security
Forces' role in the ivory trade', 3rournal of Contemporary African Studies, 13, 2 (1995).
36. Sam Sole, 'Top team to reopen probe into arms project's missing millions', Sunday
Independent, 19 May 1996; Sam Sole, 'General faces second grilling about R50 m giveaway
Sunday Independent, 18 August 1996.
37. R. Hengeveld and J. Rodenburg, Embargo: Apartheid's oil secrets revealed (Shippin
Research Bureau, Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam, 1995).

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to have received gifts from the company after helping Kotze to arrang
contract. The Commission also discovered evidence of systematic
to conceal the irregularities, suggesting a conspiracy embracing s
more senior officials over a three year period.38 A comparable ca
cupidity involving the Department of Education and Trainin
bureaucracy which administered black township schools) suggests
illicit contracting was quite common. In 1991 the son of a f
departmental director was convicted for bribing three officials to
printing business for his publishing firm.39
These instances may have represented aberrations in their respe
administrative domains but the case of the Department of Develo
Aid, the successor to the Native Affairs Department, suggests a pat
very generalized misbehaviour. A 1991 inquiry discovered 'dish
and abuse (to be) rife', concluding that the 'majority of officials .
developed a syndrome of lack of enthusiasm to the extent someti
of apathy'. Specific irregularities included fictitious tenders an
subsequent award of contracts to spouses, the receipt of gifts by offici
return for contracts, and payments to firms for imaginary work
materials: over the years several hundreds of millions of rands w
through various forms of nepotism and fraud in a department w
administered about 1 1 percent of the government's budget.40 No
abuse in this sphere confined to the final years of apartheid: other off
enquiries suggest that land transfers administered by the South A
Development Trust (a body under the authority of the Depar
of Native affairs and its successors) had for decades been man
dishonestly and incompetently.41
All these examples refer to elite or grand corruption, involving dishon

practices by senior officials resulting in large scale misappropriat
Those departments which were especially concerned with political/strat
goals of government information, defence, and homeland develop
seem to have been particularly affected by high level cormpti
addition, several homeland governments, both 'independent' and '
governing' supplied documentation of political corruption on a m
scale. In the Transkei, independence in 1976 was accompanied by t
public takeover of South African property and the subsequent sale of f
38. Marlene Burger, 'Suspended official's time off costs R9,000 a month', Sunday T
6 November 1994; Marlene Burger, 'Fat is about to fry', Sunday Times, 4 December
39. 'Corruption: Widening the net', Financial Mail, 1 November 1991.
40. Republic of South Africa, Commission of Inquiry into Development Aid, Pretor
73/1992.
41. For examples see: Republic of South Africa, Verslag van die Kommissie van Ondersoek na
die 1980-onluste en beweerde zvanbestuur in Ktvandebele verslag van die Staatspresident, Pretoria,
RP 137/1993; Republic of South Africa, First Report by the Commission of Inquiry into alleged
irregularities
Pretoria, or malpractices regarding the allocation, leasing, alienation and transfer of state lands,
RP 52/1996.

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168 AFRICAN AFFAIRS
firms and houses at very low prices to cabinet ministers and their friend
and associates. Subsequent activities by the Transkei Development Cor-
poration and the Agricultural Corporation included the politically directed
allocation of trading licences and property, loans to members of the same
small circle, and the diversion of government vehicles and equipment to
their businesses and farms.42 Official inquiries discovered subsequently
much the same pattern of behaviour in Kwandebele and Lebowa. In
Kwandebele, the Parsons Commission discovered a R1 million 'kickback'
to officials from contractors for building work never undertaken and
cabinet ministers appropriated discounts from the government's purchase
of luxury cars. One member of the Kwandebele Tender Board, J.
Morgan, managed to secure a contract in 1991 for his own firm, Profes-
sional Project Services, to supervise the erection of 164 classrooms; several
were built in the wrong villages and many not at all, even so PPS received
cheques for R105,000 in excess of the original agreement. Meanwhile
Morgan's brother-in-law was the beneficiary of another agreement, in
which his company, Hata Butle homes, undertook to supply 200 pre-
fabricated toilets, despite an original resolution by the Board to award the
contract to a firm which supplied a lower estimate. No record could be
found of the toilets reaching their supposed destination.43 Less routine
discrepancies in the accounts included a 'welcome home' function for the
chief minister, M. G. Mahlangu, on his return from a visit to Taiwan, to
which each government department had to pay R10,000 and a million
party election pamphlets which cost R1 million.
In Lebowa, the De Meyer report described misdoings in the Chief
Minister's Department as well as the Departments of Water, Law and
Order, Transport, Water Affairs and Education. Lebowa's chief minister,
Nelson Ramodike, a former traffic policeman, attracted a major share of De
Meyer's criticisms. At the time of the report's appearance there were fresh
press allegations. In addition to the two illegal liquor licences uncovered
by De Meyer, Ramodike was alleged to be running a string of state funded
businesses through various brothers and cousins as well as maintaining
a personal fleet of three top of the range Mercedes. Ramodike was
unabashed by De Meyer's revelations. Announcing the dismissal of two
members of his cabinet named in the report he said: 'The public should
praise and thank me for having been brave enough to expose the misman-
agement of filnds in Lebowa's government services before I was elected
as head of the territory'. Meanwhile, 200 officials within the Lebowa
Department of Justice received a 100 percent pay increase in April 1993,
42. Republic of the Transkei, Commission of Inquiry into the Conduct of the Department of
Commerce, Industry and Tourism, June 1987. See also Barry Streek and Richard Wicksteed,
Render unto Kaiser: A Transkei dossier (Ravan, Johannesburg, 1981), ch. 7.
43. Republic of South Africa, Verslag van die Kommissie van ondersoek na die 198onluste en
bezveerde wanbestuar in Kwandebele verslag van die Staatspresident, Pretoria, RP 137/1993.

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and in October 1992 the Lebowa Tender Board, already under fire from
De Meyer, was prevailed upon despite objections from three of its
members, to accede to the purchase of R15 million worth of cleaning
chemicals, enough for seven years' supply to the government.44 A similar
deal involving purchases of chemicals was authorized by Dr G. L. Becker,
Secretary for the QwaQwa Department of Health, at a cost of about 60
percent of his department's annual budget.45
To be sure, these occurrences in the final years of these administrations
may have represented behaviour motivated by the realization among
officials that their powers and privileges were shortly to be curtailed, but
there are other reports dating from earlier periods which suggest, as in the
case of the Transkei, that graft was entrenched and rosutine in the highest
echelons of homeland administrations through much of their history. For
example, the Skweyiya Commission in 1996 uncovered a carnival of
misconduct dating from 1978, beginning with former President Mangope's
issue of irregular tenders, his appropriation of state owned houses and
farms, and his establishment of private businesses with public funds.46
What about routine petty corruption before 1994? Its incidence prob-
ably varied in accordance with the degree of rightlessness of the people
seeking benefits or services from officials. In the Transkei in 1975 more
than R600,000 was stolen by civil servants from pensioners and an official
observed 'that there were frequently shortages at points where money
passes from hand to hand between officials and the public'. Within the
Ministry of Justice, which included the payment of pensions and disability
grants within its functions, at least ten percent of its employees were known
in 1971 to have accepted bribes.47 In the Ciskei, the Quail Commission
in 1978 'heard evidence that pension payments were sometimes refused for
reasons the pensioners concerned could not understand, such as that "no
more money is available" .48 In Kwa Zulu, legislative assembly debates
in 1978 attested to the widespread incidence of bribery within the civil
service. Research conducted by Paulus Zulu in the early 1980s suggested
that indunas and chiefs routinely extorted payments for site permits, work
44. Jacques Pauw, 'From traffic policeman to Governor of Lebowa', The Star, 16 April
1993, Justice Malala, 'Huge gravy train scandal in Lebowa', The Star, 29 September 1993;
Justice Malala, 'Sun setting on Ramodike's reign', The Star, 1 October 1993; Norman
Chandler, 'Homeland graft revealed', The Star, 19 November 1993.
45. 'More homeland graft shocks', The Sowetan, 25 November 1993.
46. Government of the North West Province, Summary of the final report of the Commission
znto corrupt practices and irregular use of public funds in government departments and parastatal
bodses by various zndividuals or at their instance, Mmbatho, 1997. For corruption at a more
humble level within the Bophuthatswana administration, see Jeremy Keenan, 'Pandora's Box:
The private accounts of a Bantustan Community Authority', in Glenn Moss and Ingrid
Obery, South African Review; 3 (Ravan, Johannesburg, 1986).
47. Roger Southall,
(Heinemann, London,South Africa's
1982), Transkei The political economy of an independent Bantustan
p. 179.
48. The Report of the Ciskei Commission, Conference Associates, Pretoria, 1980, p. 33.

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170 AFRICAN AFFAIRS
seeker permits, pensions and disability grants.49 Nor was everyday extor-
tion confined to homeland administrations: in Cape Town, for example, in
the late 1 980s, Bantu Administration Board ofEcials sold residence pertnits
to inhabitants of Crossroads; as one of Josette Cole's informants told her,
'They always did this at the Nyanga and Langa offices. It wasn't
something new to US.'50 On the East Rand, in 1959, Brandel-Syrier found
that African Clerks in the administrative offices of the township in which
she conducted fieldwork charged a fixed 'under the counter' fee for advice,
referrals and appointments.5l Township housing allocation procedures
supplied endless opportunities for dishonesty. Recently, the Guateng
Home Truths Commission has received 800 submissions concerning the
management of 45,000 state-owned houses; thousands of people may have
been evicted between 1976 and 1994 to make room for prospective tenants
who had paid bribes to councillors and officials.52
In the 1970s, black policemen were commonly believed to refrain from
charging pass offenders in exchange for bribes.53 Pre-1994 police corrup-
tion is especially difficult to estimate; SAP Commissioners reports list
dismissals for misconduct but these would have embraced a wider range of
miscreants than simply officers charged with corruption. The Auditor-
General's annual reports ceased to detail 'defalcations and irregularities' in
1967, significantly after the 1966 figures reported 58 such incidences with
respect to the police, an unprecedentedly high figure and following a steady
increase in police fraud in previous years.54 Of course the repeal of pass
laws and restrictive liquor legislation ended the two most common oppor-
tunities for police bribery and extortion. As late as 1975, according to
recent trial evidence, Greek hotel owner Alex Kavouras bribed policemen
to obtain a liquor licence for his associate Joe Kgasi, the leader of a well
known criminal syndicate and the owner of Johannesburg's first multi-
racial nightclub. Kavouras told the court: 'I had connections with the
fourth floor [senior policemen at police headquarters in John Vorster
Square] and the Liquor Board. I organized the police to turn a blind
eye.'55 Though the illicit opportunities supplied by liquor restrictions and
pass laws have long since disappeared among black South Africans, the
police have retained an enviable reputation for dishonesty: a survey
conducted through a questionnaire inserted into a November 1995 issue of
49. Gerhard Mare and Georgina Hamilton, An Appetite for Power: Buthelezi's Inkatha and the
politics of 'loyal resistance' (Ravan, Johannesburg, 1987), p. 91.
50. Josette Cole, Crossroads: the politics of reform and repression, 1976-1986 (Ravan,
Johannesburg, 1987), p. 63.
51. Mia Brandel Syrier, Reeftozon Elite (Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1971), p. 33.
52. Themba Sepotokele, 'Claims of Housing Corruption', The Star, 31 December 199?.
53. Philip Frankel, 'The Politics of Police Control', Comparative Politics, 12, 4 (1980),
p. 487.
54. Republic of South Africa, Report of the Controller and the Auditor-General for the financial
year, 1966-1967, Pretoria, RP 60, 1967.
55. Peter de Ionno, 'Fall of a vice baron', Sunday Times Metro, 16 March 1997.

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the Sozoetan found that 67 percent of its respondents were convinced that
police force members accepted bribes.56
The practice of extortion, though, was not endemic in all the lower
echelons of the South African bureaucracy, rather, before 1994 it tended
to be concentrated in those areas in which officials encountered people
who were particularly rightless and defenceless. Amongst white South
Africans experience of corruption would have been exceptional rather than
normal, and concentrated in municipal rather than national state agencies
(municipal traffic officers being notoriously susceptible to bribes).57
Other forms of corruption may have been more widespread in the bureauc-
racy of 'white' South Africa. Audits of the provincial administrations for
1992-1993 uncovered frauds to a total of R399,000 in the Cape Province
(as well as the removal from Groot Schuur hospital of R1 million worth
of bed linen) and the fraudulent issue of vouchers to the value of
R64-2 million in the Transvaal.58
The incidence and location of political corruption in post-apartheid South Africa
It would be surprising if there was no significant political corruption in

contemporary democratic South Africa. Authoritarian and secretive
governments are especially susceptible to bureaucratic venality and, a
we have seen during the last decades of apartheid South Africa's admin-
istration was no exception to this generalization. The more powerless
ordinary people were the more officials abused their position; for this
reason homeland governments were especially dishonest as were the central
government departments such as Development Aid which worked most
closely with them. Secret budgets allowed senior security officials to
misuse funds for private gain and by removing procurement from public
scrutiny they created ample opportunities for bribery. 'Strategic' kinds of
government expenditure did not have to be defended in public, whether
they involved defence projects, propaganda exercises, or sanctions evasions
and all these featured large scale misappropriation of public resources.
Given that much of the administration is still run by the same people, it
would be reasonable to expect the continuation of a certain amount of
corruption. The following overview of new South African corruption
begins by surveying its incidence in provincial governments, where it
appears to be most concentrated, before considering political corruption in
central government and parastatal bodies.
56. Marketing and Media Research, Sozuetan Cnme Survey: Presentation of crlme findings,
Johannesburg, January 1996, p. 12.
57. For examples of local authority corruption see Danny Sing and Malcolm Wallis,
'Corruption and nepotism', in Fanie Cloete and Job Mokgoro (eds.), Policies for Public Service
Transformation Juta, Cape Town, 1995), p. 143-144. In Johannesburg, municipal traffic
officers are offered up to twenty bribes a day; see Hopewell Radebe, 'Caring cop tries to earn
respect of road users', The Star, 2 October 1996.
58. Ray Hartley, 'A job with 365 days of leave a year', Sunday Times, 6 November 1994.

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172 AFRICAN AFFAIRS
Seven of the nine regional governments had to absorb homeland

administrations into their bureaucracies. The least corrupt regional
administrations seem to be the three which have not incorporated former
homelands, Gauteng and the Northern and Western Capes.59 Gauteng
has received official praise for the efficiency of its financial management but
Tokyo Sexwale's boast in early 1997 that his government could claim 'three
corruption free years' was an overstatement.60 Gauteng's record is
marred by the widespread sale of matriculation examination papers,61 huge
amounts of thefts by officials in Johannesburg pension offices, sometimes to
the scale of R2 million a month, as well as frequent bribery to jump the
pension queues,62 fraud to the tune of R1 million in the Housing and Land
Affairs Department (which might help to explain the large discrepancy
between the number of subsidies handed out and the number of low cost
homes which are under construction),63 accusations of nepotism in the
appointment of school principals,64 and the defrauding of R800,000 from
the department of education by senior bureaucrats.65 Gauteng's leaders
cannot plead that they have had to absorb corrupt homelands there were
none within the region's boundaries. In any case they make a point of
emphasizing how far reaching the managerial revolution has been in the
administration with half the senior posts now filled by new people.66
Therefore, much of this corruption cannot be explained by references to
the apartheid heritage.
Compared to some of its neighbours, though, Gauteng is an island of
probity. Mpumalanga's administration has been characterized by extreme
forms of graft amongst political notables. Just before the elections,
Kangwane politicians and civil servants took advantage of the final
measures instituted by the homeland parliament to buy their official
vehicles at bargain prices: beneficiaries of the scheme included the speaker
of the new regional legislature, the MEC for Environmental ASairs, an
59. A Corruption Barometer published by the National Party's Department of Research and
Strategy found that the incidence of corruption in these provinces was 'statistically insignifi-
cant', Cape Town, 1997, pp. 20-21.
60. 'Sexwale proud of three corruption free years', The Star, 22 February 1997.
61. The Public Protector found that the sale of matriculation papers in 1996 was limited to
Gauteng and Kwa Zulu-Natal; see Report on the progress and integrity of the senior certificate
examinations, Cape Townt 1996.
62. Troye Lund, 'Pension muddle', The Star 2 October 1996.
63. 'Housing official faces fraud charges', The Star, 12 March 1997. A provincial auditor's
investigation found that R400,000 in subsidies had been paid to developers in Phola Park in
1995-1996 but no houses were built; see Priscilla Singh, 'Health, housing departments
slated', The Star, 23 April 1997. In Lotus Gardens, an Indian suburb in Pretoria, 400 low
income houses were sold to more than one buyer by officials who has set themselves up as
estate agents, charging up to R80,000 for a house; see Lannie Motale, 'Officials arrested after
housing scam uncovered', The Star, 24 February 1996.
64. Letter from S. R. Singh, 'Jobs for the politically correct', The Star, 25 September 1995;
Sello Seripe, 'Nepotism at schools denied by SADTU', New Nation, 20 March 1997.
65. Chris Vick, 'Lighting a fire under the public service', The Star, 6 July 1996.
66. Justin Arenstein, 'The homeland that sold its cars for as little as 65c', Sunday Times,
11Junel995.

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ANC MP, Professor Ripinga, and Mrs Yvonne Phosa, wife of the new
premier.67 The Kangwane government also divested itself of several
publicly owned farms, selling them to political incumbents for prices equal
to the transfer costs.68 Shortly after the accession of the new regional
authority, R1 3 million from the low cost housing budget was used by the
region's MEC's to renovate their state houses. An additional home
improvement, this time involving the construction of a guard-house at the
deputy speaker's residence, led to the overpayment of R208,000 to a local
building firm in 1996.69 The MEC for Environmental ASairs was dis-
covered to have filed false expense claims for an official visit to
Disneyworld.70 The MEC for Safety and Security, Steve Mabona, lost his
post after an official inquiry found him to have colluded with officials in his
traffic department to issue illegal driving licences, including one to the
Deputy Speaker of the House of Assembly. Earlier, Mabona had been the
Minister of Police in the KwaNdebele government and was identified by
the Parsons Commission as the recipient of an illegal government loan.
Lower down the hierarchy is the case of the Director of the Provincial Parks
Board, Alan Gray, who not content with the R34,000 salary he received
every month, hired out to the Board the services of two businesses he
owned.7l Not to be outdone, the former chairman of the Mpumalanga
Development Corporation managed to spend his way through about
R14,000 expenses a month before being dismissed for impropriety; he then
succeeded in securing his reinstatement and only left his post after the
payment of a large gratuicy.72 In 1997, the provincial housing department
had become the centre of a major financial scandal as a consequence of the
award of a huge Rl90 million contract without regular tendering proce-
dures; the extent to which corruption may have featured in this undertaking
has yet to be established but the fact that one member of the provincial
housing board, Job Mthombeni, was also a director of the company,
Motheo Construction, which won the contract, is suggestive. The firm's
chief executive, Thandi Ddlovu is an old associate of the national Minister
of Housing; they became friends in exile. The housing scheme included
provision for a profit margin in excess of 15 percent, about three times what
is normal in the industry.73 Meanwhile, land transfers by forrner home-
land authorities to various Mpumalanga politicians and officials have
67. Jovial Rantao, 'Kangwane, KwaNdebele audit reveals graft and abuse', The Star,
23 April 1996.
68. Justin Arenstien, 'Mpumalanga spending spree probed', The Star, 19 June 1997.
69. MD fired and money back demanded after audits', The Star, 20 November 1996.
70. Justin Arenstein, 'Board chiefrs powers cut', Mail and Guardian, March 20 1997.
71. Raymond Travers, 'Corruption at Development Corporation investigated', The
Lowselder, 29 October 1996; 'MD fired and money back demanded after audits', The Star,
20 November 1996.
72. Justin Arenstein, 'Rich pickings in housing for poor', Mail and Guardian, 30 May 1997.
73. Justin Arenstein, 'Heat is on Mpumalanga MEC', Mail and Guardian, 27 June 1997.

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174 AFRICAN AFFAIRS
provoked another official investigation.74 In the lower reaches of the

provincial government, audits discovered amounts ranging from R4 1
million to R30 million as missing and unaccounted for from the primary
school feedings scheme.75 The scheme has supplied rich pickings nation-
wide for minor officials, school administrators and small contractors in
most of the provinces, though losses seem to have been largest in
Mpumalanga; only in the Western Cape where black business empower-
ment principles were ignored and it was handed over to an experienced
NGO, the Peninsular School Feeding Scheme, has it functioned with
complete honesty.76
Other peaks of political corruption in the regions include the R4 million
paid to 'ghost' workers in Kwa Zulu-Natal's Department of Nature
Conservation and the nearly R1 million stolen by a single official in Kwa
Zulu-Natal's Department of Finance.77 The Auditor-General discovered
that overpayments to suppliers and employees may have totalled as much
as R400 million in Kwa Zulu in 1994-95.78 In the Eastern Cape, the
cortuption ledger included by November 1996 'the loss of all but one
spanner and a few spare parts from the government garage in Umtata, the
gambling away of money earmarked for a new road; the defrauding of R5-3
million from the justice department in Lusikisiki and R4-4 million from the
health department in Bisho; and the pilfering of government cheques for
more than R31 million'.79 The province is believed to employ 8,000
'ghost' workers and a firther 1,519 employees are beneficiaries of acceler-
ated and 'irregular' promotion during the closing months of the Transkeien
government.80 In the Northern Province the decision by the government
in Pietersburg to spend not merely R300 million on a new parliament
building but also to divert another R33 million to construct official
residences for each member of the regional parliament was authorized
neither by the cabinet nor the tender board, emanating instead from the
premier's office. Opponents of the scheme were characterized as 'dissi-
dents' by the premier's supporters.8l Later the project was suspended.
74. 'Eastern Cape takes up school feeding scandal with Govt', The Star, 12 August 1995;
Vuyelwa Vika, 'Cheated Eastern Cape schoolchildren fainting from hunger', Sunday Indepen-
dent, 13 August 1995; Drew Forrest, 'Millions missing as feeding schemes fail', Business Day,
20 June 1996; 'Feeding scheme defrauded of R30 million', The Star, 20 June 1996.
75. Marion Edmunds, 'Food scheme faces closure', Mail and Guardian, 31 January 1997.
76. 'Financial blows hit two conservation bodies', The Sunday Independent.
77. 'Police probe R300m fraud in Kwa Zulu-Natal', The Star, 8 October 1996.
78. Adrian Hadland, 'Eastern Cape staving off total collapse', Sunday Independent,
24 November 1996.
79. Republic of South Africa, Special Interim Report of the Auditor General on the Status of the
Findings of the White Commission and the Resultant Recoveries, 30 September, 1996, Pretoria,
RP50/1997; Xoliswa Vapi, 'Hunt is on for "ghosts" in Eastern Cape', The Star, 9 January
1997.
80. 'ANC row over R33-m project', The Star, 23 August 1996; Elias Makuleke, 'Heads to
roll in Northern Province', The Star, 16 March 1997.
81. Elvis Tshikudu, 'Semenye submitted report to premier', Great North News, July 1997.

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Major irregularities in the award of tenders were an inevitable accompani-

ment of dis particular undertaking, though the Semenya Commission
found that no official gained financially.82 In the North West civil
servants in the Department of Public Works authorized a cheque for R20
million in payment for electronic equipment invoiced at R126,000.83
Nation-wide, 10 MEC's have been identified in the press as being
implicated in corrupt practices: that is about ten percent of the total
number of regional 'ministers'.84 If this was the proportion of corruption
embodied in regional political leadership, it might well be the case that a
similar share of senior managers and junior officials have also been affected
by the virus. Seven of the MEC's accused of corruption lost their posts,
two in the Free State and two in the North West, two in the Northern
Province, and one in Mpumalanga; in the case of the Free State, though,
despite the findings of an investigative commission which confirmed the
accusations against one of the sacked MEC's, the premier, Patrick Lekota,
was removed from his office and 'redeployed' because of his willingness to
publicize the culpability of his colleagues. Political corruption does not
appear to be so prevalent in central government: here it is concentrated in
particular departments, but its particular location is especially damaging.
The corruption roll call includes Home Affairs which includes among its
activities the operation of major driving licence scams throughout the
country, the SA Revenue Service where officials are currently undergoing
investigation for fraud totalling R800,000, and a murky history of tendering
in the Department of Health which while it may not have involved
dishonest behaviour by its officials and representatives (except for the many
lies they have told) has allowed private contractors lavish and self-serving
expenditure of public filnds. In the case of Home Affairs, over the years
officials in licensing departments have issued more than 1*3 million
registration numbers, while a further 750 instances of corruption by Home
82. Jovial Rantao, 'Who'll take the rap for R20 m cheque', The Star, 19 July 1996.
83. These include: Rocky Malebane Metsing, MEC for Agriculture in the North West
implicated in an illegal loan but also accused of seeking sexual favours in return for contracts,
see Jovial Rantao, 'North-West's Rocky Road', The Star, 27 February 1995; Vax Mayekiso
the Free State MEC for Housing dismissed for intervening officially in a dispute in which he
had a personal business interest, 'Lekota dismisses MEC who enriched himself', The Star, 19
May 1995; Ace Magashule, Free State MEC for Economics and Tourism after illegal transfers
and loans to companies, Rehana Roussouw, 'Lekota's foe implicated in dubious deals', Mail
and Guardian, 20 June 1997; Riaan de Wet, MEC for Tourism, North West, sacked after
misuse of a government 'plain, The Star, 16 August 1996; at least two Mpumalanga MEC's
whom a confidential Mpumalanga government report alleged had spent R1 3 million from a
low cost housing budget to renovate their state residences, Justin Arenstein, 'Mpumalanga's
big spenders', Mail and Guardian, 27 September 1996; Northern Province MEC's for public
works and finance, Dikeledi Magadzi and C. E. Mushwana, blamed in the Semenya
Commission report for improper tendering for the purchase of government buildings; both
were subsequently replaced together with three others, Hopewell Radebe, 'Sacking of MECs
preceded financial report', The Star, 2 July 1997.
84. Blackrnan Ngoro, 'State oicials in R13 m fake passport scam', Sunday Independent,
15 June 1997; Jacqui Reeves, 'How hi-jackers register "hot" card', The Star, 21 June 1997.

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176 AFRICAN AFFAIRS
affairs functionaries have sold at least 270 blank passports.85 In the

Revenue Service, a merger between Inland Revenue and Customs in 1996
facilitated the misappropriation of PAYE cheques; of a supposed establish-
ment of 300 customs inspectors, only 20 remain and this too has made it
much easier for importers to evade duties through bribery.86 Though the
Public Protector's investigation of the 'Sarafina' affair did not indicate that
officials sought personal gain through neglecting regular tendering proce-
dures it did feature the kind of heavy handed efforts to prevent disclosures
which engender corruption. The Sarafina saga features the award of a
R14 million contract to impresario Mbongeni Ngema to mount a musical
to promote AIDs education. The budget drew upon a European Union
donation, and included provisions for two luxury buses, R300,000 direc-
tor's fees, and office facilities totalling R1 4 million. The allocation for the
production exceeded the Health Department's expenditure for provincial
Aids education. Director General Olive Shisana in the month following
the outcry over the Sarafina contract ordered her subordinates to sign an
oath of secrecy to stop 'sensitive information which can cause the depart-
ment and eventually the state embarrassment from falling into the wrong
hands'. The misuse of European Union money to fund the Sarafina AIDs
musical was partly a consequence of officials not realizing that donor
money was subject to the normal rules, though it may also have been
an effect of ministerial impatience with established bureaucratic
procedures. In parliament, the ANC whip changed the order of the
debate to ensure that the Minister would not be present while the ANC
chair of the portfolio committee dismissed opposition calls for an inquiry as
'spurious and politically motivated'.87 Later, ANC members in the
national Assembly passed a vote of confidence in the Health Minister.
The ANC publicity department issued a statement, commending the
Minister for ensuring that 'the resources of our country are used in a cost
effective manner in the fight against Aids'.88 Subsequent to the
85. Allan Greenblo, 'Tax evasion and fraud explode', Sunday Independent, 23 July 1997; Gill
Gifford, 'Revenue offices scam', The Star, 21 April 1997.
86. 'It was obvious to all observers who attended the meeting that ANC MPs had been
primed to refrain from asking anything that resembled a probing question', Patrick Bulger,
'Parliamentary Review', The Star, 4 March 1996. One explanation favoured among parlia-
mentarians of the behaviour of ANC members in the portfolio committee is that they were
influenced by extraneous political considerations. Two key members of the committee, the
chairperson, Dr Manto Tshabala-Msimang and Mrs Adelaide Tambo were together aligned
with Nkosazana Zuma, the Health Minister, in an internal dispute in the ANC Women's
League between them and partisans of Winnie Mandela and they were anxious not to give
leverage to Mrs Zuma's opponents in the League. Shortly after the parliamentary debate, Dr
Tshabala-Msimang was promoted to the position of Deputy Minister of Justice.
87. Mondli Makhanya, 'Disquiet grows over ANC's regard for credibility', The Star,
8 March 1996.
88. Prakash Naidoo, 'Health ministry breaks rules again', Sunday Independent, 16 June 1996;
John Maclinnan, 'Charges of cover up as Zuma ducks Sarafina debate', Sunday Independent,
21 March 1996; Mungo Soggot, 'Sarafina: Health Department gags workers', Mail and
Guardian, 14 June 1996; Public Protector of South Africa, Investigation into the Play Sarafina
II, Cape Town, 20 May, 1996.

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Sarafina scandal, a further report appeared of health department officials

awarding a contract despite Tender Board refusal of two applications for
approval.89
The real citadels of official self-enrichment, though, are to be found in
three central government ministries: Social Welfare, Safety and Security,
and Justice. As a general rule of thumb, the more a civil service bureauc-
racy has to do with the public, the more likely it is to be dishonest in its
dealings. In the case of Welfare, the problems are mainly attributable to
the legacy of the pre-1994 era. The Department inherited 14 separate
bureaucracies, many of them very venal and extremely incompetent.
There was no centralized record of 2*8 million entitlements to pension
payments and many of the supposed recipients were dead. As noted in
the Department's 1996 white paper: 'The fragmentation of government has
led to gross inefficiencies . . . many loopholes were created which could be
exploited by officials and the public'.90 It is reckoned that about 10
percent of the Department's budget is lost to official fraud and false
entitlements. Reform has been slow, partly because of the complexity of
the task, but also perhaps that the first GNU Minister of Welfare, Abe
Williams, was himself a major culprit in a pension fraud scandal which
affected the old pension department of the House of Representatives.
Williams was forced to resign after an investigation by the Western Cape
MEC for Health and Social Services suggested that he had accepted a bribe
from a company contracted to distribute pension funds and which had
been allowed access to the interest accumulated from banking the unpaid
pensions.9l In 1996 46,000 claimants were discovered to be dead and
were removed from the register, saving the Department over R240
million. In addition 26,000 recipients of duplicate pensions were
discovered. In both cases it seems likely that civil servants knowingly
allowed many of these payments.92
The police rival the pension administrators in their predisposition
towards corruption. In 1995-1996, 8,000 police in Gauteng alone
were reported to have committed crimes of one kind or another.93 In
Johannesburg, according to the divisional police chief interviewed in 1996,
four police a week were suspended for corruption and 1,076 policemen
nationally were under investigation for corruption in 1996, an increase
89. Republic of South kfrica, Government Gazette, Vol. 368, No. 16943, 2 February 1996.
90. Rehana Roussouw, 'The payment that put paid to Abe', Mail and Guardian, 23 February
1996; The Star, 'Leakage costing Department of Welfare R1-bn a year', The Star, 9 October
1996.
91. Republic of South Africa, Department of Welfare: Annual Report, 1996/1997, Pretoria, RP
80/1997.
92. Derek Rodney, 'Russia and South Africa share culture of corruption', The Star,
6 January 1997.
93. Helen Grange, 'Police chief plays cool in crime prevention's hottest strategy', The Star,
5 November 1996; 'More police probed for corruption', The Star, 6 November 1996.

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178 AFRICAN AFFAIRS
from 89 investigations in 1995, 56 in 1994 and 32 in 1993.94 In 1996,

again merely in Gauteng, R5 million worth of cars were stolen, most likely
by policemen from the car pounds in which the police keep the cars
which have already been stolen. Ten million rands was allocated at
the beginning of 1997 to build new police proof maximum security car forts
to prevent further thefts of this kind.95 In Rustenberg, a station
commander was discovered in 1995 to be running a car theft syndicate in
complicity with professional criminals. Since then there has been an
epidemic of reports of collusion between police and vehicle theft syndicates
with police supplying registration papers for stolen cars; police are also
believed to be involved in contract killings and prostitution rackets.96 In
1995 2,000 policemen defrauded their medical aid scheme of R60
million.97 A major bribery scandal implicated police at Johannesburg's
container port.98 In February 1997 five members of the Benoni
flying squad were arrested on bribery charges.99 Police were discovered to
have extorted thousands of rands from people they illegally arrested and
held in cells in the Sandton area, mainly on suspicion of illegal
immigration. lOO According to the SAP Anti-Corruption Unit, police
corruption was believed to have increased by 8 percent in 1995; about half
the 800 allegations investigated by the unit were located in Gauteng.
Among the officers charged with corruption was Charlie Landman, head of
the elite Brixton Murder and Robbery Squad.l01 Policemen regularly
conspire with employees of the Department of Justice to massively expand
the scope of public corruption through assisting magistrates and prosecu-
tors in the wholesale theft and deliberate loss of dockets in return for bribes
from charged criminals. This practice is especially widespread in the
Western Cape and in Gauteng but it exists everywhere: several thousand
cases each year do not reach court, causing wastage and loss of millions of
rands.
It may reflect historically entrenched habits but a recent wave of
resignations by prosecutors and threats of strike action suggest that the
present demoralization of the prosecution service may have encouraged the
94. Derek Rodney, 'Maximum security car forts will cost R10 m', The Star, 17 October
1996.
95. Sash Jonson, 'Revealed: cops' hand in theft and hijackings', The Star, 1 March 1997;
Sash Jonson, 'Police who change sides', The Star, 17 May 1997.
96. Glynnis Underhill, 'Probe into cop corruption runs into obstacles', The Star, 29 June
1996.
97. Angella Johnson, 'Police chief is shipped out after R70 million thefts', Mail and
Guardian, 29 November 1996.
98. 'Police oicers took bribes and stole cheques', The Star, 1 February 1997.
99. Anso Thom, 'ID documents: reports of police extortion, beatings in Sandton', The Star,
18 October 1996.
100. Angella Johnson, 'Crooks in uniform under investigation', Mail and Guardian, 7 June
1996.
101. Gaye Davis, 'South Africa faces justice crisis', Mail and Guardian, 5 July 1996; Sash
Jonson, 'Courts under siege', The Star, 10 May 1997.

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spread of court venality.l02 Government austerity since the election as

well as rising crime levels have contributed to the financial woes of the
Justice Department. Witwatersrand attorney general's reports also sug-
gest that anxiety about the future impact on careers and promotion of
affirlllative action was a major source of demoralization among white
prosecutors in 1993 and 1994.103
The parastatal sector has supplied rich seams of official corruption.
Telkom and the Post Office lost R20 1 million due to employee fraud in the
1995-1996 year (which does not include the sacks of letters misappropri-
ated by postal sorters);l04 one third of the SABC's 1996 losses were
attributable to corruption, 121 Transnet managers were discovered in 1996
to be guilty of major abuse of their credit cards,l05 Eskom managers in
Soweto made substantial profits by awarding tenders to companies owned
by former colleagues,l06 R500,000 RDP funds was alleged to have
disappeared into the pockets of Portnet's Durban managers.l07 At the
Independent Broadcasting Authority, directors were forced to resign after
an inquiry had revealed misuse of official travel and entertainment budgets
running into millions of rands. Investigators discovered repeated claims
and payments for single sets of expenses, fraudulent transfers of IBA funds
to private bank accounts, the acceptance of gifts by councillors in defiance
of an existing restriction, upgrading of sponsored tickets at IBA expense,
claims for travel expenses already paid by other agencies, free flights and
hotel accommodation for spouses and families of councillors, and extrava-
gant misuse of corporate credit cards on personal shopping.l08 An audit
conducted at Denel, the arms exporter, in early 1997, revealed R5 * 6
million unauthorized payments to executives in an unauthorized profit
sharing scheme.l09 A financial manager at the Ntsika Enterprise
Promotions Agency, a government agency established to promote small
businesses, Shine-On Hadebe, was dismissed in December 1996 after
allegations of embezzling R70,000; the Agency's new director, June
Mkhwanazi, also resigned after reports had surfaced that she had stolen
R2 1 1,000 intended for low cost homes in her previous post in
102. OWce of the Attorney General, Witwatersrand Division Annual Report, Johannesburg,
1993, RP104/1994 and 1994. RP100/1995.
103. Jovial Rantao, 'Corruption and fraud lead to loss of R201 m at Telkom and Post
Office', The Star, 14 February 1996.
104. Andy Duffy, 'The Transnet train smash', Mail and Guardian, 15 November 1996.
105. Andy Duffy, 'Fskom scam uncovered', Mail and Guardian, 8 November 1996.
106. Ann Eveleth, 'Phosa's brother in Portnet probe', Mail and Guardian, 14 March 1997.
107. Republic of South Africa, Report of the Auditor-General on the Independent Broadcasting
Authority, 1995-1996, Pretoria, RP67/1997.
108. Newton Kanhema, 'Audit reveals irregular payments to Denel bosses', Sunday
Independent, 6 July 1997.
109. Mpho Mantjiu, 'Allegations rock agency', The Star, 18 December 1996; Angella
Johnson, 'Open docket for Ntsika head', Mail and Guardian, 29 November 1996.

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180 AFRICAN AFFAIRS
Swaziland.ll? At least five managing directors of parastatals or publi

corporations have been involved in improper self-enriching activity
Meanwhile a succession of scandals have exposed administrative mal
practice in South African universities. At the University of Venda a senio
administrator secured a credit card with a limit of R150,000 without the
knowledge of the institution's council and the staff pension find issued a
cheque of R4 million which was dishonoured by the bank. A computer
operator was discovered in 1996 to have altered the records of student
marks in return for cash. At the Qwa campus of the University of the
North, a chemistry lecturer was beaten up by the registrar after he had
reported similar offences to the police. At the University of the Transkei
the vice chancellor was suspended by his council after 'casual and unilatera
award of contracts running into tens of millions of rands'. With th
exception of the Qwa incident, though, all these cases were uncovered
through the routine operation of university business: they do not necessar-
ily imply an epidemic of academic fraud. The University of Stellenbosch,
though, whose managers discreetly changed the rules to allow senior staff
to convert their unused leave entitlements into huge financial compensa-
tions, suggest a reflexive kind of entitlement-seeking which may represent a
more deep seated form of institutional corruption.1ll
Does the extent of corruption in central and regional government
represent a problem of crisis level proportions? In 1997 Deloitte and
Touche spokesmen suggested that the overall cost of public sector fraud
and mismanagement could easily exceed R10 million, which would make it
comparable in scale to the extent of abuse in countries considered to be
endemically corrupt.l12 A more conservative estimate from the National
Party suggests that 'corruption has cost the tax paper between R13-5 billion
and R20 billion over the past three years'.1l3 It is certainly systemic in
certain provincial departments its appearance at both high and lowly
levels and its evident repetition confirm this and it seems to be routine in
police stations. So far, there is little evidence of corruption amongst
National Assembly members or amongst national cabinet members, or
110. 'Venda University loses millions', The Star, 27 October 1995; 'Another VC sage', Mail
and Guardian, 7 March 1997; Joshua Amuphadi, 'Lecturer in punch-up', Mail and Guardian,
20 December 1996; Marion Edmunds, 'Rules changed to give staffhuge pay-outs', Mail and
Guardian, 29 November 1996; Republic of South Africa, Public Protector's Inquiry into certain
irregularities pertaining to the issue of degrees at the University of Zululand, Special Report No. 5,
Cape Town, 1996.
111. 'Fraud and mismanagement could cost the country R10 bn', The Star, 1 June 1997.
1 12. Press statement by Marthinus van Schalkwyk, executive director of the National Party,
11 August 1997, http://www.natweb.co.za.
113. Though Moses Mayekiso, a former president of the South African National Civic
Organisation, admitted in 1995 using SANCO's account to settle his wife's hotel bill.
SANCO's financial administrator could find no record of repayment despite claims by
Mayekiso that he had settled the debt. Since his release in 1989, Mayekiso had succeeded in
accumulating two properties and a Mercedes-Benz; see Linda Rulashe, 'MP uses past
employers to pay wife's hotel bill', Sunday Times, 26 November 1995.

13.245.201.252 on Thu, 14 Apr 2022 10:36:14 UTC
amongst senior officials in national state departments. 114 At seven percent

of public expenditure its real proportional cost could be much higher
because only a small proportion of the government's budget is invested in
capital or developmental projects. As well as this any assessment of the
effects of South African political corruption should include in the reckon-
ing its impact on the judicial system and the way in which it strengthens
popular political cynicism.
Is political corruption primarily an inheritance from the old regime?

Do present levels of corruption represent a substantial expansion of
public dishonesty? Corruption was very extensive in the old regime, both
in central government and in homeland administrations. Some of the
conditions which allowed it to flourish have disappeared: homeland admin-
istrations have been incorporated and all government activities are now
subject to well publicized audits and the extension of the franchise should
in theory make government more accountable. The Department of
Defence no longer receives secret funding for arms procurement and
political subversion. Significantly, the only major allegation of venality in
the defence field has concerned unauthorized profit sharing schemes for
managers and mismanagement of the pensions fund in DENEL, the state
owned arms company, very much a relic of the old regime.ll5
Old habits may die hard, though, amongst many of the administrative
cadres who have been absorbed from the old homeland governments into
the new provincial bureaucracies.ll6 Within the domain of central gov-
emment some of the most potentially wastefil parts of the old apartheid
edifice remain surprisingly unscathed. A case in point is the Central
Energy Fund, the body which today controls what used to be the Strategic
Fuel Fund. This is now chaired by Don Mkhwanazi, a leading figure in
114. The Motheo housing scandal in Mpumalanga may yet implicate the minister of
housing, Sankie Mthembi Mahanyele. A provincial report was interpreted by the Phosa
administration as clearing anyone of deriving improper benefits from the scheme but the
Dreyer Commission was not empowered to examine any evidence relating to the conduct of
officials or politicians in the national department. Mahanyele's dismissal of her director
general, William Cobbett, who initially tried to prevent the scheme as well as the implications
of her friendship with the director of the Motheo construction company are amongst those
issues which the provincial inquiry could not investigate.
115. Newton Kanhema, 'Audit reveals irregular payments to Denel bosses', Sunday Inde-
pendent, 25 May 1997; 'No probe at Denel', Mail and Guardian, 11 July 1997.
1 16. There may not be a simple correlation, though, between relative levels of corruption in
different homelands and the new provinces which have absorbed them. Kwa Zulu-Natal
according to the Corruption Barometer published by the National Party (Department of
Research and Strategy, National Party, Cape Town, 1997, pp. 20-21) has had the highest
incidence since 1994 of reported ofiicial fraud and theft. If local newspaper editorial opinion
is to be taken seriously this represented a sharp deterioration from previous official conduct in
the region. Durban's Daily News, in commenting on provincial health department fraud in
mid 1995, observed that: 'the new Government of Kwa Zulu-Natal is the inheritor of
traditions of sound administration from the Natal Provincial administration which had
no major scandal in its 84 years of existence and the Kwa Zulu government, which
experienced the occasional hiccup but always took immediate and exemplary corrective
action'; 'Disturbing trend', editorial, 9 June 1997.

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182 AFRICAN AFFAIRS
black business circles who became an economic advisor to Thabo Mbeki in

1990. At the beginning of 1997, Mkhwanazi appointed to a R3 million
CEF consultancy a former Liberian finance minister, Emmanual Shaw II,
whose knowledge of the South African oil industry derived from his
involvement in various sanctions busting exercises on behalf of the SFF in
the 1980s. Shaw's brief was to assist in the proposed privatization of
CEF the body serves as a holding company for several operations
including Mossgas. As finance minister in Liberia, Shaw had allegedly
defrauded his government of $27 million in payments to the Liberian
National Petroleum Company. Shaw's association with Mkhwanazi
dated back at least until 1990 when he had worked with the CEF chairman
on the black business sponsored national Empowerment Forum. Given
this background, Shaw's appointment as CEF consultant was disconcerting
and it is now the subject of ministerial inquiry.ll7
Much of the post 1994 corruption has occurred in bureaucratic spheres
which were already notoriously venal: social welfare and the police would
be two instances. The efforts to reorganize the Social Welfare Depart-
ment and establish a unified record system may yet succeed in checking the
misappropriation of pensions while in the South African police a number of
new anti-corruption agencies including one unit in each province and an
independent Complaints Directorate began operating in 1996.ll8 What
may appear to be an increased incidence of abuse in these departments is
probably mainly a consequence of more stringent controls and more open
disclosure and might fairly be perceived as the lingering effects of the old
system.
However there are many new sources of stimulation for corrupt
behaviour. These include non-meritocratic processes of bureaucratic
recruitment and promotion inherent in certain kinds of 'affirmative action',
tendering principles which favour small businesses (and which require
much more efficient administration if they are to be handled honestly),ll9
increasing shortages of skilled manpower in the public service especially in
l 17. For a biography of Shaw see Mungo Soggot and James Butty, 'His main occupation
was stealing', Mail and Guardian, 19 December 1997.
118. Anti-corruption measures within the police are beginning to enjoy some success: the
monthly tally of 70 cases reported against police in central Johannesburg represents a
significant decline from the 120 complaints recorded at the beginning of 1996, see Derek
Rodney, 'Apathy blamed on corruption', The Star, 5 August 1997.
119. Official State Tender Board criteria for tenders worth less than R2 million accord 88
points for price, 10 for equity owned by disadvantaged shareholders and two points for equity
owned by women; 'State tenders to favour blacks and women', The Star, 12 September
1996. Forty percent of Public Works Department construction contracts in 1995-1996 were
awarded to small businesses, see Christo Volschenk, 'Small businesses awarded 40 percent of
public works projects', The Star, 23 April 1997. A green paper on public sector procurement
reform acknowledged that 'decisions by Tender Boards have in some instances set poor
precedents for others, particularly in the areas where emerging enterprizes are seeking to
engage in public sector procurement'. Each province has its own board and different
regulations governing tendering; the paper argues in favour of a nationally standardized tender
policy Government Gazette, Vol. 382, No. 17928, 14 April 1997.

13.245.20fff:ffff:ffff:ffff on Thu, 01 Jan 1976 12:34:56 UTC
its financial control systems, a range of new sources of public finance,

including foreign-derived development aid, and an ambitious expansion of
the kinds and quantity of citizen entitlements to public resources.
Inexperienced ministers and new public managers are often ignorant of
tendering procedures: as the spokesmen for one of the Northern Province's
MEC's conceded: 'We have never ruled before. We never even knew
what a tender board was before we came to power.'l20 Apparent favour-
itism in public tendering in certain contexts might be very difficult to avoid
given the small sizes and the overlapping character of the black political
business elites.l2l The resulting cronyism may become an increasingly
salient feature of another potential source of corrupt favouritism: the
rearrangement of business opportunities or the contracting out of tra-
ditional inctions of governments to private ventures with political
connections. Examples of such concerns are the Dyambu Trust which
runs Lindela detention camp, a facility for confining illegal immigrants
before their repatriation by the Department of Home Affairs. Inmates
accuse camp officials of demanding bribes in return for allowing them
access to lawyers. The Dyambu Trust was established to raise 'funds
for community development' with a board of ANC Womens' League
notables including Lindiwe Sisulu, Deputy Minister of Home Affairs,
Adelaide Tambo, and the Speaker of the House of Assembly, Baleka
Mbete-Kgositsile.l22 Meanwhile the ANC Youth League's Trade and
Investment Company helped form a consortium entitled Siyakha Youth
Services to bid for the construction and management of a private prison to
hold juvenile offenders in Mpumalanga: ANCYL involvement was dis-
closed only in the course of hearings by the parliamentary portfolio
committee on correctional services; no reference to the League or its
company appeared on the bidding document.l23
New types of corruption which cannot be attributed to habits instilled
during the previous administration also include the nepotism arising from
political solidarity: at a workshop in January 1997 participants 'agreed that
comradeship was becoming more of an issue in their studies. Senior black
officials . . . felt ducy bound to appoint comrades who fought with them in
the struggle for democracy, regardless of their skills or qualifications.'l24
The promotion of teachers in Guateng or the award of a contract by
120. Adam Cooke, 'Corruption talk hits a tender nerve', The Star, 10 October 1995.
121. Though it ought to be possible to avoid situations such as that in the Free State
where the current chairman of the provincial legislature's housing portfolio committee, Vas
Mayekiso, a former MEC for housing, has since 1991 held the directorship of a housing
company which in 1996 and 1997 was awarded a series of municipal housing contracts.
122.
25 Gill Gifford,
September 1997. 'Illegal aliens' camp rife with bribery and corruption', The Star,
123. Pieter Malan, 'ANC plans to own jail', The Star, 8 November 1997.
124. Jacqui
Sunday Reeves,19
Independent, 'Workshop studies the corrupt, confused, demoralised civil service',
January 1997.

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AFRICAN AFFAIRS
184
director general of the Education Department to an old AZAPO associate

might be cases in point. Housing tendering may, it seems, also have been
influenced by such friendships in Mpumalanga and the school feeding
scheme more generally are examples of the kind of corruption which can
accompany the extension of state welfare activity outstripping control
capacity in public administration. Nor can all the self-serving behaviour
by provincial MEC's be explained by reference to the predisposition of old
homeland politicians who have remained in high office: most of the MEC's
concerned had strong 'struggle' credentials before their appointments to
ANC governments. In these cases, the rapid social mobility from situa-
tions of material hardship which modernization theorists suggest as a prime
cause of political corruption may help to illuminate such activity. Such
arguments should not be overstated, though. At least one provincial
government, the Eastern Cape, in 1996 introduced financial restrictions
which have reduced the budgetary authority of its officials and made false
claims and dishonest tendering much more difficult. Another rather
impressive example of institutional resilience has been the government's
determination to 'downsize' the bureaucracy from 1?2 million to 900,000
over three years. In fact in 1996 only 15,000 jobs were cut but given the
demands from the ANC's trade union allies to expand the public sector this
represented a considerable commitment to austerity. The two million
applications for the 11 ,000 affirmative action posts advertized by the
public service commission were evidence of the extent of social pressure
on political leadership to create jobs; significantly, only 2,000 of these
posts could be filled with appropriately qualified people and the remainder
were kept vacant. The ANC's fiscal conservatism in this respect
represents an important limit to the deployment of patronage by office
holders.
To date, electoral politics and representative institutions do not seem

particularly susceptible to corruption, public perceptions notwithstanding.
Fresh sources of stimulation may develop, though. In a newly competitive
political environment, political parties are increasingly dependent upon
private sector finance. The ANC which in 1994 accepted a secret
R500,000 campaign donation from Sol Kerzner, the hotel and casino chain
proprietor facing bribery charges which he subsequently denied, has since
adopted the practice of taking fees for private appearances at business
functions by cabinet ministers.l25 At the time of the dispute over the
Kerzner donation, the ANC's deputy secretary general, Cheryl Carolus,
told reporters that the organization 'would not disclose donations because
donors were entitled to privacy'. Newly 'empowered' black businessmen
125. Newton Kanhema, 'Holomisa turns on Mandela in row over Kerzner', The Star, 3
August 1996. Mungo Soggot, 'Rent a minister for dinner', Mail and Guardian, 20 June
1997.

13.245.201.252 on Thu, 14 Apr 2022 10:36:14 UTC
have become a major source of organizational finance: at the ANC's fiftieth

conference in December in Mafikeng the party's treasurer reported that it
was now possible to solicit from such people R2 million donations rather
than the R250,000 they had customarily been asked for in the past. In
return for this generosity, outgoing treasurer Makhenkesi Stofile told his
audience, 'We opted for the role of facilitators for black business in the
country.l26 Smaller parties may be even more dependent on donations
from such sources. In Kwa Zulu-Natal the Inkatha Freedom Party
accepted donations from illegal casino operators while the provincial
government began preparing legislation to regulate the gambling
industry.l27 These kinds of actions are at the very least conducive to
transactive forms of political corruption. Also potentially harmful is the
ANC's apparently indulgent attitude to corruption within its own ranks.
Shortly before Allen Boesak's return to South Africa to undergo trial for
fraud, in the Western Cape in February 1997, the provincial executive 'had
resolved to support Boesak and welcome him in the way he deserved to be
welcomed',l28 a decision which resulted in a delegation assembled at the
airport to greet Boesak on arrival, headed by the Minister of Justice in his
position as Western Cape chairman. Meanwhile, in the Gauteng legis-
lature the ANC appointed to a committee established to monitor police
conduct one Oupa Monareng, convicted in 1995 of bribing a policeman to
avoid arrest for possession of a stolen car.129 A similar tolerance was
shown to Winnie Mandela when she was appointed as a deputy minister in
1994, only a year after an internal ANC investigation had discovered
serious shortcomings in her management of its social welfare
department. In 1991, at a time when the ANC was keen to acquire allies
in the homelands, at a June 16th commemorative rally in Lebowa, Nelson
Mandela publicly forgave Nelson Ramodike for his 'past mistakes'.l30
The errant Nori West Provincial MEC for agriculture, Rocky Malebane
Metsing, was actually dismissed twice, on the first occasion after allegations
by the Land Claims registrar of sexual harassment: a 'Reinstate Rocky
Campaign' prompted the ANC's national leadership to persuade Premier
Pop Molefe to reappoint Malebane-Metsing to his administration. 131 The
ANC maintained its relationship with Ramodike until shortly before the
election and in September it accused the South African government of
political victimization in its takeover of the Lebowa administration which
126.
22 Jovial 1997.
December Rantao, 'Daunting task faces newly elected treasurer-general', The Star,
127. 'IFP coffers filled by illegal casino owners', The Star, 28 January 1997.
128. Rehana Roussouw, 'Madiba "to testify for Allen"', Mail and Guardian, 20 March
1 997.
129. Mike Masipa, 'ANC picks briber to check up on police', The Star, 10 June 1997.
130. Jacques Pauw, 'From traffic policeman to Governor of Lebowa', The Star, 16 April
1 993.
131. Jacob Dhlamini, 'The gripping saga of a fallen hero', Sunday Times, 26 February 1995.

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186 AFRICAN AFFAIRS
had been prompted by the findings of the De Meyer Commission and

overspending of its 1992-93 budget by R722 milliorl.l32
As important as these incitements to bureaucratic misbehaviour hav
been, avaricious attitudes have developed around high public office and
senior levels of management in the public sector. Parastatal manag
who award themselves R900,000 renumeration packages, Youth and Tru
Commissioners who get paid like high court judges,l33 members
parliament who award themselves 15 percent pay increases befo
passing a single act of social reform (after election rhetoric that MPs would
be paid no better than skilled workers),134 provincial MEC's who insist
equipping their car-pools with top of the range German limousines,l3
Johannesburg city councillors who outfit their offices with entertainm
facilities, and ministers who travel at public expense to intemational spo
events may not be breaking the law but they are certainly encouragin
corruption. In general, the doctrine that the public service should em
late the private sector in its managerial payment scales and intern
managerial practice is probably unhealthy: South African private manage
are paid very generously, given the wage differentials which character
most companies and the South African private sector is believed to be o
132. Justice Malala, 'Huge gravy train scandal in Lebowa', The Star, 29 Septemb
1993. Much of the over-spending was attributable to new salary scales and irregula
promotions for the territories' 60,000 civil servants awarded by Ramodike in a clumsy bid
bolster his political support; see Justice Malala, 'Sun setting fast on Ramodike's reign', T
Star, 1 October 1993.
133. The chairman of the Youth Commission's salary package totals R352,366, including a
car allowance of R69,840; see Patrick Bulger, 'R350,000 package for youth chairman', The
Star, 6 November 1996.
134. Jay Naidoo cited in Stephen Cranston, 'Mandela's pay not that high at second look'
The Star, 14 May 1994. One of the first actions of the new parliament in 1994 was to accept
the salary recommendations for public office holders of the Melamet Committee which drew
upon the services of a private firm of consultants to evaluate the 'job content' of office
bearers. ANC MPs were virtually unanimous in feeling that the proposed salary scales were
'equitable' and that public objections to their remunerations were based upon 'gross
exaggeration'. The ANC caucus announced that it would urge that the scales should further
acknowledge the costs of running two homes; David Breier, 'MPs unite to fight for their gravy
train perks', The Star, 27 August 1994. Commenting upon his new salary package of
R193,000, ANC MP Saki Magozoma observed, 'There is an assumption that everyone
benefits by going to parliament but many people are actually being penalised'. Nelson
Mandela had to 'twist his arm' to persuade him to leave his R250,000 executive position with
South African Breweries, Chris Barron, 'Burp! But for some fat cats . . .', Sunday Times, 19
June 1994. Two years later, Magozoma left parliament to assume a R920,000 managing
directorship with the railway parastatal, Transnet. Though trade union and civic spokesmen
were critlcal, Magozoma's new salary was defended by the Foundation for African Business
and Consumer Services: 'There is nothing wrong with a black man earning a good salary';
Magomoza's salary was matched by the remunerations received by the (white) chief executives
of Spoornet and South African Airways- Thabo Leshilo, 'Fabcos defends black transnet
bosses pay', The Star, 21 October 1996, and Edwin Naidu, 'Fury over fat cat pay', The Star
18 October 1996.
135. Mpumalanga Transport MEC Jackson Mthembu's comment, when interviewed about
his decision to spend R2-3 million on a fleet of BMW 528's for his colleagues, was revealing:
'I am a leader in my community and therefore have a certain status you can't be saying I
should drive a 1600 cc vehicle'. The national minister of transport, Mac Maharaj, drives a
1992 Volkswagen Jetta; Justin Arenstein, 'Big Wheels', The Sunday Times, 14 December 1997.

13.245.201.252 on Thu, 14 Apr 2022 10:36:14 UTC
of the most fraudulent in the world. 136 While the predispositions towards
corruption associated with modernization may not be as strongly
entrenched as in many developing countries and may indeed be on the
wane, as we have seen from the comparative findings surveyed at the
beginning of this essay, political corruption is not exclusively a symptom of
modernization, it can flourish in industrial democracies as well, especially
in political systems in which one party predominates. As with these
polities, South African vulnerability to political corruption is enhanced by
administrative decentralization and the importation into public admin-
istration of'results oriented' business principles.
As noted earlier, many people think that there has been an increase in
corruption: even the Minister of Justice, Dullah Omar, has said that there
has been a growth in administrative corruption since 1994, though he
qualified this assertion by acknowledging that its 'seeds . . . were sown long
before we came into the government'.l37 The evidence surveyed here
suggests that though old habits and predispositions may well sustain much
of the existing administrative corruption, its apparent expansion is also the
consequence of change. As the theoretical literature surveyed at the
beginning of the paper suggests, the simultaneous democratization and
restructuring of the South African state makes it very vulnerable to
corruption, as has the absorption into it of cadres and governors of a new
political class with recent experience of severe poverty. Certainly there is
also a new public awareness of the issue and a variety of bureaucratic and
political measures have been instituted to check its progress, including the
Public Protector's office, the Office of Serious Economic Offences, a
number of internal departmental investigative units, commissions of
inquiry, rationalization of records, and a register of MP's interests. To
date, though, no political office-holder has been charged and convicted for
corruption; international experience suggests that it is the litmus test of the
effectiveness of control measures.
136. Sixty-six percent of respondents in a survey by an international consultancy of South

African business had experienced some kind of fraud in the previous year, apparently one of
the highest incidences in surveys conducted worldwide; Madeleine Wackernagel, 'Fraud fears
escalate', Mail and Guardian, 29 November 1996. A report in 1995 quoted risk insurers as
claiming that 'employee related fraud in SA financial institutions is seen by the London
market as being as bad as South American countries such as Colombia'; Terry Betty, 'SA
employee fraud "among the world's worst" ', Sunday Times, 5 February 1995.
137. Prakash Naidoo, 'Seeds of sleaze bearing bitter fruit', The Star, 25 May 1995.

13.245.201.252 on Thu, 14 Apr 2022 10:36:14 UTC

Political Corruption in South Africa (History) - Tom Lodge

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Political Corruption in South Africa

Author(s): Tom Lodge

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/723262

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MANY PEOPLE BELIEVE that widespread political cortuption exists in South

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agency, has reported on a survey which confirms a growing perception

3. Transparency International Corruption Perception Index, 1997, press release, Johannesburg,

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Political corruption is often perceived to be especially characteristic of

13. J. C. Bekker, 'Nepotism, corruption and discrimination: A predicament for a post

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wealth.19 Accordingly, relatively low levels of official corruption in, for

South African susceptibility

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an important, role in the economy and it by no means provides the main

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25. By November 1996, 32 percent of management positions and 52 percent of senior

28. Yves Meny,

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has considerably expanded the area of government open t

The historical legacy

Government spokesmen argue that contemporary corruption

31. J. N. Cloete, 'The Bureaucracy,' in Anthony de Crespigny and Robert Sch

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been exceptional on those grounds but the D

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All these examples refer to elite or grand corruption, involving dishon

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The incidence and location of political corruption in post-apartheid South Africa

It would be surprising if there was no significant political corruption in

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Seven of the nine regional governments had to absorb homeland

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provoked another official investigation.74 In the lower reaches of the

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Major irregularities in the award of tenders were an inevitable accompani-

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affairs functionaries have sold at least 270 blank passports.85 In the

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Sarafina scandal, a further report appeared of health department officials

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from 89 investigations in 1995, 56 in 1994 and 32 in 1993.94 In 1996,

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spread of court venality.l02 Government austerity since the election as

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Swaziland.ll? At least five managing directors of parastatals or publi

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amongst senior officials in national state departments. 114 At seven percent

Is political corruption primarily an inheritance from the old regime?

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black business circles who became an economic advisor to Thabo Mbeki in

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its financial control systems, a range of new sources of public finance,

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director general of the Education Department to an old AZAPO associate

To date, electoral politics and representative institutions do not seem