Mbeki: SA must remain vigilant
2005-03-22 10:47
Pretoria - South Africa has to remain vigilant against new manifestations of corruption, President Thabo Mbeki said in Pretoria on Tuesday.
Mbeki added that South Africa's law enforcement capacity and legislative framework had to keep ahead of such new developments.
Addressing the second national anti-corruption conference, he said the country had to continue to strengthen capacity in anti-corruption programmes and improve on the performance of the criminal justice system.
New ways and means
"...all of us know that those intent on committing crime will continuously seek new ways and means to beat the law enforcement system," he told government, business and civil society representatives.
The new Prevention and Combating of Corrupt Activities Act contained additional tools to fight corruption, including the encouragement of the public to record corruption and other crimes to the police and the establishment of a register of businesses that committed corrupt acts, especially in government procurement.
It remained a challenge to mobilise sources to prevent corruption and improve awareness and education programmes, said Mbeki.
Is the current model working?
Another challenge for the summit was to evaluate whether the sectoral collaboration anti-corruption model adopted for South Africa in 1999 was working as it should - and if not, what was needed to improve it.
The summit further needed to assess the efficacy of the national anti-corruption forum, he said.
"...to be effective in its efforts to raise awareness, prevent and fight corruption, a mechanism of this nature needs to have a deliberate plan of work, with defined responsibilities and accountability arrangements," said Mbeki.
"As we know, corruption occurs in all sectors of society. The perpetrators, those corrupting and those corrupted are equally guilty.
While we tend to concentrate on corruption of high value transactions and the dealing of the upper echelons of society, ordinary people are the most vulnerable to corruption in the processes of accessing services and infrastructure such as government grants, water, electricity, land and housing."
This also applied to those seeking employment or workers unable to gain promotion because of corruption of their supervisors, said Mbeki.
"...we have a particular responsibility to protect the poor and the weak from the corrupt practices of those in powerful positions," he said.
Mbeki pointed out that at times corruption was a "handy label" used arbitrarily by commentators, politicians, media and those who have "one or another axe to grind".
He said the summit needed to understand why corruption levels were often measured on perceptions and why the media correctly reported on the incidents of corruption but not on steps taken to prevent and combat corruption.
"It is important to answer these and other related questions to help us deal with the real cases and causes of corruption and not perceptions.
Those answers will help us the better to evaluate the progress, or lack thereof of our work in presenting and combating corruption," said Mbeki.
- SAPA