Corruption limits progress

IT would seem as though Finance Minister Malusi Gigaba’s visit to woo fund managers in the US was a nonevent — the media failed to report on the reception he received, and the ANC has kept quiet, so we can assume his mission was a spectacular failure.

The article “With cap in hand: SA’s slippery slope to IMF aid” (April 30), suggests that if we fail to reverse our economic decline, we will need a bail-out by the IMF, which imposes onerous conditions.

One stipulation by the IMF should be that those involved in corruption be brought to book and charged, and their illgotten gains confiscated.

Corruption has to be curtailed. Africa is not the only culprit — it proliferates in South America and in Eastern Europe, where politicians and business acolytes benefit and return the favours.

Corruption seriously limits a country’s progress, denying its poorer citizens a share in its wealth because it fails to fully provide housing, employment, education and health services.

What an indictment of politicians and the system they entrench, ignoring the promise they make to improve the lives of those they are elected to serve. — Ted O’Connor, Johannesburg