Come clean and donate ill-gotten gains

SA’s economy is drowning in a sea of corruption. It has become an institutional way of doing business, both in the public and the private sectors.

In my financial services career, I have come across a number of “temptations” — contracts offered in exchange for back-handers. I have always opted to turn those “opportunities” down.

I have often been told that “you don’t understand how business is done in Africa”. My answer has always been the same: “I understand perfectly well. I just opt not to do business that way.”

The Gupta e-mail leaks have exposed a number of companies that opted to do business with those involved in looting state-owned enterprises and thus the South African taxpayer. That is only one example of what is happening in SA today. Corruption is not limited to the Guptas and their affiliates. Unfortunately, it transcends politics and bridges the divide between the private and the public sectors.

Corruption is not a victimless crime. Apart from the direct losses incurred by taxpayers, it affects the economy.

In SA, corruption has made our economy dysfunctional. Our state-owned enterprises are drowning in debt, with a dire lack of investors willing to lend them money; we are in a recession; international companies are not investing; jobs are not being created; unemployment is running at a 16-year high of 27.7%; we are talking about IMF bail-outs and the privatisation of state assets; taxes are going up as the tax base shrinks (there are only 4.8-million taxpayers who pay personal income tax, which accounts for 36% of all government revenue, with 1-million taxpayers paying 77% of the total); more than 17-million people live off social grants … the list goes on.

Yet, despite mounting evidence of massive plunder, our investigative and prosecuting authorities are missing in action. Thank you, Zapiro, for your unforgettable cartoon of the Hawks suffering from “bird flu”!

It is thus up to South African citizens to say enough is enough. We need to take action and we need to do it now.

One way is to visibly name, shame and punish all those who are in any way associated or complicit with what has taken place in SA over the past decade.

Visible punishment acts as a deterrent but, more importantly, it also gives others the courage to stand up and do the right thing.

We need more Gupta-style leaks, we need more names in the public domain, we need more tarnished reputations.

Name-and-shame strategies that affect reputations and the bottom line, work. They etch the names of those involved into the minds and, more importantly, the hearts of the public. They force other corporates, possibly reluctantly, to act and do the morally right thing.

Action can take many forms. It can be as dramatic as ending business relationships with those who are affected, or less public but equally effective, in demanding real answers that are not cloaked in “we are investigating” excuses.

Investigations may take years, may not be carried out by competent independent parties, may never be made public, are typically too narrow in focus and may span only a limited number of transgressions.

Investigations may be announced simply to play for time, hoping that the focus will soon move on to another potentially guilty party.

The obvious question is whether the companies implicated in the Gupta leaks can do anything to redeem their reputations. The answer is a resounding yes.

All of those that earned fees or made profits from Gupta-related contracts should donate those fees and profits to charities or investigative publications and civil rights organisations fighting corruption on behalf of the rest of us. Imagine the giant infusion of cash those organisations would receive and the good they could do with it.

We do not need to wait for investigations to be concluded to know that the fees and profits came from bribes, which ultimately came from money stolen from South African taxpayers.

Now is the time to apologise and give back to SA in more ways than one.

Those who do may well be forgiven. Those who don’t should beware of what else may leak out of the Gupta e-mails and other disclosures not yet in the public domain.

THE QUESTION IS WHETHER THOSE IMPLICATED CAN REDEEM THEIR REPUTATIONS. THE ANSWER IS A RESOUNDING YES

Wierzycka (@Magda_Wierzycka) is Sygnia Group CEO.