Low score for SA on graft index
“COVID-19 is not just a health and economic crisis, it’s a corruption crisis, one that we’re currently failing to manage,” Transparency International chair Delia Ferreira Rubio said as the organisation released its 2020 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI).
South Africa has barely shifted from its previous position, with a score of 44 and a ranking of 69 alongside Bulgaria, Hungary, Jamaica, Romania and Tunisia.
The 2020 edition of the CPI, respected as a leading global indicator of public-sector corruption, scores and ranks 180 countries and territories around the world based on perceptions of corruption, drawing on 13 expert assessments and surveys of businesspeople. It uses a scale of zero to 100, where zero is highly corrupt and 100 is “very clean”.
“South Africa’s failure to move above the 50-point on the CPI for nearly 10 years is a damning indictment of the extent of corruption and (shows) just how damaging it has been to the country,” said Corruption Watch executive director David Lewis.
“Public trust in government has been further eroded during the Covid19 pandemic, as blatant flouting of procurement processes has characterised the purchase of personal protective equipment, at a time when all of society needs to work together with integrity.”
The report found that in South Africa, an audit of Covid-19 expenditures revealed overpricing, fraud and corruption.
“Corruption undermines an equitable response to Covid-19 and other crises, highlighting the importance of transparency and anti-corruption measures in emergency situations.
“Our analysis also indicates that even when accounting for economic development, higher levels of corruption are associated with lower universal health-care coverage and higher rates of infant and maternal mortality and deaths from cancer, diabetes, and respiratory and cardiovascular diseases,” the CPI states.
Recommendations included strengthening oversight and adequate transparency. “The Covid-19 crisis exacerbated democratic decline, with some governments exploiting the pandemic to suspend parliaments,” it said.