SA blows a feeble whistle at UK graft meeting

All strategy and no action, the government’s bland submission left civil society watchdogs cold,

STILL groggy from my flight, I at first didn’t register the invite from the Prime Minister’s Office in my inbox. I had flown to London to represent Corruption Watch during the week of the Anti-Corruption Summit earlier this month — in particular, to attend a conference the day before the main leaders’ summit.

Civil society mortals weren’t invited to the leaders’ summit. Billed as a gathering only for those countries willing to tackle corruption head-on, South Africa would be participating, I was told, but it was unclear who our representative would be.

Thanks to dogged negotiating by Transparency International UK, our hosts, a broader slice of civil society was allowed to attend the summit at the last minute — which explained my surprise invite from No 10.

Delegates from 43 countries — among them 11 heads of state — and the UN Development Project, World Bank, International Monetary Fund and Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development were there. I craned my neck to spot a familiar face from our government.

All participating nations signed up to a strongly worded global declaration against corruption, committing to expose the perpetrators of corruption, punish their crimes and drive out the scourge from society.

It was announced that 42 nations — including South Africa —– had made country-specific commitments such as transparency in company ownership and public contracting, and improved whistleblower legislation. I was eager to see what South Africa had committed to doing.

Globally, a big win was Kenya Afghanistan, Nigeria, the Netherlands and France joining the UK in being the first to establish central open beneficial ownership registers — so that the public can know who ultimately benefits from each incorporated company in those countries.

Kenya, the UK, Italy and Jordan committed to increasing transparency of the beneficial owners of companies bidding for public contracts, and nine more countries (including Tanzania, Afghanistan, France and Russia) promised to move in this direction.

Twenty-one countries (including Kenya, the US, Brazil, India, the UK and Nigeria) promised to ban companies found guilty of corruption from public procurement and share information on corrupt bidders across borders. Five countries (including Brazil and India) committed to continuing to promote and strengthen whistleblower protection.

Here were countries from the developed and developing world coming together in mutual recognition of corruption’s insidious threat to their societies. And they were willing to go on record on an international platform to describe their game plan to fight it — a world first.

But South Africa didn’t measure up.

I scoured our four-page commitment for encouraging pledges, but found none. The only takeaway line was that South Africa is working on redrafting its national anti-corruption strategy. But this is nothing new. The project has been on the cards for a couple of years and Corruption Watch has been part of the initial consultation on the redraft.

During lunch I raced to reception to find out who our government representative was, hoping to find out more about our statement.

I was pointed in the direction of Obed Mlaba, South Africa’s high commissioner to the UK. We had a brief chat, but his response was vague.

Mlaba was unable to tell me who had put South Africa’s document together, and left after the break.

The general feeling among civil society representatives was that South Africa’s submission was among the weakest of the lot.

Because the summit was originally intended to be a government-to-government event only, perhaps South Africa hoped it could fly under the radar with a bland submission that would go unnoticed. But it picked the wrong forum in which to do that. We were there, we took note, and as corruption fighters, it left us cold.

Now more than ever we need our government to show the world that it is taking decisive action to clean up corruption in our own back yard. A fob-off about yet another strategy just won’t cut it.

Rehbock is global campaigns officer at Corruption Watch, which is the South African chapter of Transparency International. The trip was funded by the UK chapter

I scoured our four-page commitment for encouraging pledges, but found none