Address This State of Corruption

OUTA wants President Ramaphosa to use SONA 2025 to tell us how his government intends to win the war on corruption.

The Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse hopes to hear a State of the Nation Address (SONA) with innovative solutions and convincing plans to get organised crime and corruption under control.

While recent geo-political developments in the USA and the DRC will no doubt attract a lot of President Ramaphosa’s attention in this year’s SONA, OUTA wants President Ramaphosa to use SONA 2025 to tell us how his government intends to win the war on corruption.

The crisis of corruption has been raging for many years and is getting worse. Despite the scourge of corruption and organised crime being acknowledged as a crisis, it is certainly not being taken seriously or treated as a crisis by the President.

We are tired of the lip service about plans to prioritise the fight against corruption and we want clear, action-oriented plans with deadlines, along with the funding being built into the upcoming Budget 2025.
The President has an enormous cabinet, so we want to hear a comprehensive, realistic and tough plan from this large group. We’d also really like to see the back of some of those ministers such as Thembi Simelane, who do not have a place in a corruption-free government.

At the opening of the 7th Parliament in July last year, the President told us: “To tackle crime and corruption we must have capable, sophisticated and independent law enforcement agencies that can fight complex and organised crime.” There were promises of modern technology to help with crime fighting, a data-driven approach and a focus on priority crimes including gang violence and the construction mafia and yet we do not get a sense of meaningful traction in this regard.

We need to see vast improvements in capacity building to enable these law enforcement agencies to become far more “capable, sophisticated and independent” with modern technology and a collaborative approach between the various agencies if we are to get on top of this crisis. This means more highly skilled and capable expertise with the ability to fight organised crime in SARS, the Special Investigating Unit (SIU), the Hawks, the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) and its Investigating Directorate, and in the Public Protector.

Our courts also desperately need more funds to improve systems and working conditions, with the introduction of specialised anti-corruption courts to focus on the complexities required to tackle organised criminal syndicates and money laundering. In addition, the substantial delays in securing court dates have amplified the denial of justice and has become a serious challenge when it comes to addressing crime and corruption.

Criminal syndicates operate within many state-owned entities and government departments, thriving on procurement manipulation, irregularities and fruitless and wasteful expenditure. At OUTA, we continue to witness the common agendas and modus operandi playing out time and time again, and yet we see little evidence of the government being able to get this situation under control or tackle the sophisticated criminal networks that have infiltrated so many sectors of state spending.

The State Capture Commission recommendations ought to be implemented in full, without reservation, yet have been largely ignored. The President’s own National Anti-Corruption Agency has been extremely slow in its commissioning, whilst the Public Procurement Anti-Corruption Agency recommended by the State Capture Commission is nowhere to be seen.

In the July 2024 opening of Parliament address, and on many occasions before that, the President promised that our municipalities would be fixed, and yet we see no concrete steps to address the demise and financial ruin of many municipalities, with very little accountability for those who have caused the demise and looting of these entities.

The public are fed up with false promises whilst weak law enforcement continues to plague the nation and keeps millions trapped in poverty. While the country will no doubt cherish the President’s claims of success in tackling load shedding, the efforts to address Transnet’s woes, the increased investment in infrastructure and improved visa application processing, we will be listening closely to this year’s SONA 2025 speech, and then later this month to the Minister of Finance’s budget speech, for meaningful talk and resources being allocated to the anti-corruption agenda.