Preliminary research proposal

Topic: The impact of corruption of in South Africa’s public sector: using binoculars in the tender
system and its kick-backs

Background

Problem statement

Government in South Africa has experienced corruption as a major problem. Corruption stems from
a hierarchical form and this means that corruption injected as a disease from top-level government
officials. Politics has been used as a means achieve personal gains. The public sector has become an
opportunity to “strike gold and enjoy loaves and fishes of office”. This can be seen in the decline in
poor standards of conduct in the public sector, for example, management, administration and
governance have lost their course. Furthermore, government policies are poorly implemented,
ministers among themselves do not have confidence including their agencies and monetary fraud.
The embezzlement and contract swindles and fraud allegations involving minters and governmental
Managing Directors. For example, this can be seen with COVID-19 allegations. Furthermore, there
was a decline in civil service confidence with Health Minister Dr Zweli Mkhize. One can argue that
the decline in confidence it is due to corruption. The worst part is the fact that regardless of the
expansion of the public sector’s power and size, this is noticeable by the lack of performance and
low labor productivity in public sector. A persisting question is: how has corruption hindered the
efficacy of the public sector’s performance to sustainably develop South Africa.

Importance to the research

1. How is corruption affecting efficacy of performance of the tender system?

2. What are the key corruption causes in South Africa’s public sector?
3. What are the feelings of public servants towards corruption in the tendering system by
public servants?
4. Are the anti-corruption measures efficient to eradicate or curb practices of corruption within
the public sector?

Significance of the study

Eradicating corruption is not an overnight campaign. A country like England took them a more or less
a century to bring corruption under a low percentage. Successful stories of eradicating corruption
some time ago is Singapore and China. For example, anti-corruption measures in China started in
1974 and but there is corruption but it is minimal. For a country to eradicate corruption especially in
shorter period is highly impossible. Therefore, implementing effective anti-corruption reforms it is
very crucial. Nonetheless, the project will entail the following significance; it will be used a source of
reference for those intending to expand their knowledge about corruption, and also for those
interested in pursuing a thorough research project on corruption as well as anti-corruption; it can
also be of assistance to policy-makers wanting to understand the impact of corruption in the public
sector.