Office of the Auditor-General

A significant proportion (48%) of the respondents saw the office of the Auditor-General as effective in fighting corruption, with more than a quarter (26%) seeing it as very effective. Slightly more than a tenth (14%) of the respondents regarded the office as not very effective, while a mere 5% saw it as not effective at all. A total of 7% responded that they did not know enough to rank the office.

Public Service Commission

The most likely (37%) opinion on the effectiveness of the Public Service Commission was that it was not very effective. Just over a quarter (26%) of the respondents regarded it as effective and less than a tenth (8%) as very effective. Slightly more than a tenth (12%) saw the Commission as not effective at all, and a significant proportion of respondents (17%) did not know how to rank it. Black respondents were much more likely to regard the commission as very effective, than were whites. Whites were much more likely to indicate that they did not know.

Comparative analysis

In the experts’ opinion, the Special Investigating Unit stood out by a significant margin as the anti-corruption agency perceived to be the most effective of those covered by the survey (figure 22 and 23). This is followed by the office of the Auditor-General (74%), the office of the Public Protector (62%), the Special Investigating Directorate on Corruption in the National Directorate of Public Prosecutions (47%) and the Public Service Commission (34%).

The Special Investigating Unit clearly stood out in the expert rankings as the most effective of the anti-corruption agencies polled. With a specific anti-corruption mandate and special powers to prevent the loss of, as well as to recover public money on behalf of the state on the basis of presidential proclamations, the unit and its former head, Judge Willem Heath, were able to persuade public and expert opinion of their effectiveness in fighting corruption.

The constitutional court judgement in November 2000 ruled that a judge could not head an investigative unit and receive executive directives. This and other issues led to the resignation of Judge Heath in early 2001, resulting in uncertainty over the future of the unit. In the meantime, the Henning report, which reviewed the outstanding caseload of the unit, found that the effectiveness of the unit in speedily acting to recover assets was severely hampered by poor case management and taking on cases which were not necessarily within their primary mandate. The head of the Asset Forfeiture Unit of the National Prosecuting Authority, Willie Hofmeyer, was appointed head of the Special Investigating Unit in July 2001.

Although the Public Service Commission has been tasked to be the flag carrier of the government’s anti-corruption initiative at the April 1999 summit and has been responsible for convening meetings of the cross-sectoral task team, it is perceived to be least effective in fighting corruption by the expert panel. Since April 2001, the Department of Public Service and Administration has been mandated by the cabinet to play a far more active role in defining government priorities around fighting corruption. It is likely that the Public Service Commission will revert back to its constitutional oversight function of promoting professional ethics and monitoring the public service.

A striking 31% of the respondents were not able to give an opinion on the effectiveness of the work of the Special Investigating Directorate on Corruption. This is not surprising, since the directorate struggled for various reasons to define its mandate and acquire the appropriate capacity to fill it, although much excitement arose when it was proclaimed in February 2000. With the streamlining of the Scorpions under the National Prosecuting Authority, all special directorates have been integrated under the Directorate of Special Operations (the ‘Scorpions’).

It is clear that the perception of the effectiveness of anti-corruption agencies is a key issue. How is the effectiveness improved of existing bodies tasked with an anti-corruption mandate, particularly in terms of the investigation and prosecution of corruption cases? Should these institutions be replaced with a single anti-corruption agency in the anticipation that such a move would improve the current capacity to deal with corruption in a more effective way?

While the Public Service Commission’s audit report has gone some way towards documenting the current situation in agencies with an anti-corruption role in terms of their mandate, resources and outcomes, not enough consideration has been given to how these bodies might function optimally in terms of their primary mandate and in relation to corruption. Such an exercise requires further deliberation and thinking around how to measure the effectiveness of such agencies in dealing with corruption. One of the main difficulties is not really knowing what the extent is of the corruption problem, as identified earlier in this monograph. Ideally, both the audit report and the strategy document on how to fight corruption in the public sector, currently being formulated by the Public Service Task Team, should be premised on (currently non-existent) baseline data on the nature and extent of corruption in the public sector. Cases, outcomes and opinions of the effectiveness of various agencies could then be measured against some appreciation of the magnitude of the problem.