Africa-Press – South-Africa. The policing sector accounted for the highest percentage of reported cases of alleged corruption in 2021.
This is according to Corruption Watch, which released its annual report on corruption in the country on Thursday.
It showed that 10% of the reports it received on corruption were in the policing sector.
“Reports of corruption in the South African Police Service (SAPS) ranged from abuse of authority, such as the use of state resources to exert pressure on or use of violence against civilians to dereliction of duty, where police personnel failed to act upon complaints against their own.”
The report continued:
The most common forms of corruption in the sector were: abuse of authority at 40%, dereliction of duty at 35%, and bribery or extortion at 26%.
Schools came in second and accounted for 5.8% of the total number of reported cases of alleged corruption in 2021.
In 2021, the organisation received 3 248 reports of alleged corruption, which was a decline of 1 532 when compared to the previous year.
“Most of these accounts relate to allegations of maladministration (18%), followed by procurement corruption and abuse of authority (16% each). Other reports focus on fraud (14%), misappropriation of resources (12%), and dereliction of duty (8%), all of which featured prominently throughout the Covid-19 period and its various stages of lockdown,” said the report.
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The majority of the reports came from Gauteng at 45%, followed by KwaZulu-Natal with 10%.
The organisation is celebrating its 10-year anniversary.
The executive director, Karam Singh, said the watchdog would continue in its efforts to apply pressure on decision-makers.
“We see ourselves as an activist organisation that carries the public trust, a role we are privileged to perform in the interests of the country. We pledge to continue our work in applying pressure on decision-makers, top officials and leaders in the public and private sectors, and to honour our commitment, made all those years ago in 2012, to work towards the creation of a corruption-free South Africa.
“An essential part of this work is to ensure adequate protection and support for whistleblowers, without whom we would not exist,” he said.
According to the Corruption Perceptions Index, which was released in January by Transparency International (TI), South Africa scored 44 out of 100.
The index ranks 180 countries according to its perceived levels of public sector corruption. Zero is highly corrupt on the index’s scale, and 100 is very clean.
“South Africa and the Corruption Perceptions Index have not had a productive relationship over the last 10 years. The country’s consistently mediocre ranking since 2012 has failed to produce the necessary impetus to lift it out of the doldrums – meaning that the government’s efforts to make real inroads against the root causes of corruption have been futile,” said the report.
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