Increased corruption drowns Botswana further

Index drops 10 places down

Botswana, one of the top performers in the Corruption Perceptions Index ( CPI), in the SubSaharan region has hit a historic low in the 2021 rating, recording a significant decline from a score of 65 in 2012 down to 55 in 2021.

The results corroborate the findings of Transparency International’s 2019 Global Corruption Barometer survey, which showed that most people in Botswana thought corruption had increased.

Botswana is currently a distant runner- up after Seychelles at a score of 70 and Cape Verde at 58. There are concerns over the impunity with which corruption happens, such as in the looting of the National Petroleum Fund, which implicated senior government officials.

Botswana, according to the Index is also among significant decliners, alongside Liberia, Mali, and South Sudan.

The civil society, under the aegis of its umbrella body, Botswana Council of Non- Governmental Organisations ( BOCONGO) has always decried the declining performance of the country in transparency and accountability and recorded this through the African Peer Review Mechanism.

They cited lack of autonomy on the part of the Directorate on Corruption and Economic Crime ( DCEC) as one of the main challenges in the fight against corruption in Botswana.

Unlike in other countries where anti- corruption units are independent agencies, the DCEC is a department under the Directorate on Public Service Management and has to compete with other departments and agencies for the muchneeded resources.

BOCONGO’s view is that this compromises the Directorate’s ability to fulfill its mandate. While other law enforcement agencies, such as the Directorate of Intelligence Services, have their own budgets, and therefore, a semblance of autonomy, the DCEC does not.

Leaders of opposition political parties have also recommended that the position be entrenched in the Constitution and that the DCEC become an independent agency that reports directly to Parliament. Unfortunately, this suggestion has not moved past members of the ruling party.

Another challenge is that the DCEC does not have the power to prosecute people who engage in corruption. Following an investigation, a dossier is prepared for the Director of Public Prosecutions ( DPP), who takes over from that point onwards.

This results in delays before the start of a trial as cases keep going back and forth between the DCEC and the DPP, particularly when evidence is time- sensitive.

Botswana civil society proposed that the position of the director- general of the DCEC should be entrenched in the Constitution to render it greater autonomy. Further, that official be legally required to declare their assets and any potential conflict of interest.

With an average score of 33 out of 100, SubSaharan Africa generally shows no significant improvement in the newly- released Corruption Index. The gains made by a handful of countries are overshadowed by backsliding or stagnation in others and the region’s poor performance overall as 44 out of 49 countries assessed on the index still score below 50.

The Covid- 19 pandemic severely hit the continent, which exacerbated the serious corruption problems that exist from long before. The report notes that to keep corruption out of the public eye, governments across the region have limited information and cracked down on independent voices calling out abuses of power.

The 2021 CPI shows that 80 percent of countries across the region have stagnated in the last 10 years. One of the biggest threats to progress is grand corruption – systemic corruption involving high- level public officials and vast sums of money, often accompanied by gross human rights violations.

And yet impunity has been the norm, rather than the exception. Badly performing countries include Equatorial Guinea at score 17, Somalia at 13, and South Sudan at 11.

According to the 2021 CPI, results should serve as a wake- up call to societies across Sub- Saharan Africa. The magnitude of corruption challenges requires responses much bolder than ever before.

The report says that sustainable progress on anti- corruption can only be achieved if societal and institutional checks on power are ensured.

Governments must urgently roll back on the disproportionate restrictions on civil liberties and stop using the Covid- 19 pandemic or ongoing conflicts as an excuse for stifling dissent.

Anti- corruption agencies and justice institutions have been called on to provide accountability no matter how high- level the culprit is, when allegations of abuse emerge.