SA scores D rating on corruption risk

THERE’S still not enough oversight over defence spending across Africa, so the risk of corruption is “high” to “critical”, according to Transparency International (TI).

While South Africa has better oversight of defence spending than most African countries and was regarded by TI as one of the top seven, it still scored only a D rating on the corruption-risk scale.

Yesterday, TI, a UK-based non-governmental anti-corruption organisation, released its Government Defence Anti-Corruption Index on Africa. The index measures the risk of corruption in national defence and security establishments in 47 African countries.

“Only seven African states assessed in the index received a D, representing a ‘high’ risk of defence corruption. The remaining 40 states received an E or F, representing ‘very high’ or ‘critical’ risks,” TI said.

The report raised some issues with South Africa’s spending.

“Defence procurement has been marred by allegations of opportunistic purchases and concerns that secret budgets such as the Special Defence Account are being used for a significant amount of routine procurement to avoid oversight.

“The Protection of State Information Bill (Secrecy Bill), which is waiting for the presidential sign-off, would only make access to information harder, while significantly reducing protection for whistle-blowers,” TI said.

Across the continent, defence spending was rising “but defence institutions are largely exempt from scrutiny”.

The 47 countries surveyed together logged about $40 billion (R668bn) on defence spending in 2014 – an increase of 91 percent since 2005.

Armed conflicts and coups are down, and African states are increasing co-ordination for conflict resolution through the AU, said the report, but there are new threats from radical terrorist groups like Boko Haram, al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and al-Shabaab.