Corruption Watch – a victory for workers
The Working class and poor communities of South Africa will soon be congratulating COSATU and the rest of Civil Society for taking the decision - as announced by comrade Zwelinzima Vavi - to launch the long awaited Corruption Watch. The date for the formal launch is still to be announced, the launch is likely to happen early next year.
Corruption Watch will come in the form of an interactive website, sms-line and call-centre to report corruption in both the Public and Private Sectors.
The South African Municipal Workers Union (SAMWU) will participate fully in assisting this structure to investigate Local Government and all of its entities. This is a victory for all workers and a stern warning to all those who are abusing public funds – this initiative will undoubtedly intensify our battle to cut out the cancer of corruption from the Local Government sector – as we have been fighting a long and tedious uphill battle with regards to rooting out corruption from possibly the most corrupt sphere of Government, with the least oversight.
SAMWU has been in the forefront of fighting corruption at Municipal level, and long before it was politically acceptable to do so. Many of our leaders at local level were vilified, often victimised, and some physically attacked for courageously exposing corrupt practices.
Despite the threats to their livelihoods and reputations, many of our comrades persisted because they felt that it was not just a crime in the strict sense of the term, but because corruption has been a decisive factor in thwarting effective service delivery to many of our most impoverished communities.
But our members were only able to expose the crooked tenderpreneurs, the rampant cronyism, politically convenient manoeuvring and nepotism by having access to documents, and being able to use them to alert greater authorities that malpractices were being committed.
Though Municipal Workers welcome the establishment of Corruption Watch we also believe that the State must be ruthless with those who lost their moral compass and as comrade Vavi said, at the National Anti-Corruption Summit on Thursday in Sandton “If Government only implemented its own resolutions on dealing with corruption, we would be living in a much better place.”
Tahir Sema.
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