SA ‘is not doing well in fighting graft’

South Africa has lost a further two points since last year on the leading global index measuring perceptions of public sector corruption around the world and has never scored as low as 41 until now.

Anti-corruption movement Transparency International (TI) released the 2023 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), which narrated a gloomy picture of South Africa’s progress.

Dropping below the global average, South Africa is one of 23 countries that reached their lowest scores this year, falling into the category of flawed democracies.

This score is a decline from the previous low of 42 in 2013 and two points below its initial score of 43 in 2012, reported TI.

Political analyst Dr Ntsikelelo Breakfast said South Africa scoring as low as 41 might be influenced by the state capture project.

“Being number 41 shows South Africa is not doing well in of fighting corruption,” he said.

“It also shows there have not been enough political reforms to address corruption. It shows that government doesn’t take the fight against corruption seriously.”

Economic analyst Dr Azar Jammine agreed the state capture has affected society in a big way. However, he highlighted “corruption itself doesn’t necessarily mean that a country’s economy is also low”.

“The problem with South Africa is that corruption is closely linked to government and has led to many state resources being diverted into people’s pockets rather going into development,” he said.

Breakfast added if ministers were accused of wrongdoings but were not punished, it sends the wrong message to society.

According to CPI, for the sixth year in a row, Denmark was leading the rank, with a score of 90.

Meanwhile, countries experiencing weak democratic institutions tend to score the worst, with Somalia ranking number 11.

Breakfast said the country’s economic outlook doesn’t look good and there’s a relationship between the political environment and economic environment.

“Who wants to invest in a country that is affected by corruption on a large scale,” he said.

Jammine said Vietnam was also ranked at number 41 by CPI but it is a high economic growth country, despite the fact that it has high levels of corruption.

CPI relied on 13 independent data sources and used a scale of zero to 100, where zero was highly corrupt and 100 was very clean.

CPI noted countries with strong rule of law and well-functioning democratic institutions often sit at the top of the index.

“Democratic countries tend to greatly outperform authoritarian regimes when controlling corruption. Full democracies have a CPI average of 73, flawed democracies have one of 48 and nondemocratic regimes just 32,” CPI said.