Corruption has spread downwards to infect all society
The phenomenal rise in corruption by trusted professionals such as auditors, medical doctors and lawyers shows that SA’s integrity ecosystem, the overarching societal frameworks of laws, values and institutions established to combat corruption, ensure probity and accountability, has collapsed.
Society generally views auditors, medical professionals and lawyers with higher regard, because these people hold positions that exercise a public trust. They are expected to perform to the highest ethical, personal and professional standards, and act in the best interests of those they serve, whether shareholders, customers or patients.
One reason they have entry examinations, professional associations and formal standards of conduct is to set basic principles of good behaviour. Society views ethical failures, corruption and indifference by them with more alarm.
Recently it was revealed that Tongaat Hulett’s profits had been overstated for years. Its external auditors were stunningly silent about the unethical conduct all that time.
Many of South Africa’s large auditing firms have been in the spotlight for ethical transgressions. Last year the ministries of justice, health and police announced a nationwide investigation into state attorneys and private practitioners, accused of siphoning off over R80bn from government through collusion, fraud and corruption.
Government figures show that almost R40bn is lost annually in the health sector through corruption. The Council for Medical Schemes has warned that fraud, corruption and waste cost the private health-care system about R22bn a year. Last month, President Cyril Ramaphosa launched the Health Sector Anti-Corruption Forum.
This corruption points to multiple system failures. The failure starts with the ANC, which sets the tone for its members and wider society. In 2015, Gwede Mantashe, when he was ANC secretary-general, said that corruption was a “critical” challenge for the ANC that “diminishes the standing and dents the image of the organisation”.
The ANC has run SA like a party state and the corruption in the ANC is mirrored in the state. The ANC chooses most members of parliament and those MPs are accountable to the party, not constituencies.
This means that a corrupt
ANC leadership can appoint corrupt members of parliament. Alternatively,
ANC MPs, fearing recall, will often look the other way rather than hold corrupt peers to account.
Because the ANC has been dominant, corruption in its leadership, morals and culture has infected broader society. Because the ANC and government leadership behave corruptly, lower-ranking public and elected officials and ordinary citizens see corruption as acceptable.
Corruption by regulatory authorities has contributed to the spread of corruption. In many cases, supposedly independent regulatory authorities have been staffed by corrupt, incompetent and uncaring ANC deployees. Honest professionals in such authorities are often hounded out.
Civil society must play a more proactive role to ensure regulators are competently staffed and held accountable for their lack of independent oversight over professions and firms.
In many cases, the business cultures of many professional service companies — law firms, auditing firms and medical companies — have begun to mirror the corrupt culture of the ANC and the state, with whom they do business.
But professional associations have spectacularly failed to uphold the ethical and professional standards of members.
Given the nature of corruption, professional associations must hold members and firms to account. They must play a stronger role in ensuring that corporate cultures are ethical, the clients they take on more balanced and caring. There has to be a change in firms’ focus on profits at all costs, towards more balanced, ethical and sustainable profit targets. Making trusted professionals behaving ethically, is an important step in the fight against systemic corruption.
Public and elected officials and ordinary citizens see corruption as acceptable