Tag Archives: South Africa

Bringing Down the House?: Legislative and Political Limits on Anticorruption Efforts in South Africa

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A swimming pool. A cattle corral. An amphitheater. These are the sorts of ostensible “security upgrades” at Nkandla, the home of South African president Jacob Zuma, which filled the Public Protector’s report on the misuse of state funds.  As Eden pointed out in a previous post, these salacious details spread through the South African media like a firestorm, leading to calls for President Zuma to resign—or at least pay back the money—and adding to the growing reputation of Thuli Madonsela, South Africa’s “Public Protector“, an ombudsman-like position constitutionally charged with investigating improper government conduct.

Madonsela, who helped draft South Africa’s current constitution, was unanimously nominated by a National Assembly committee and appointed by President Zuma in 2009.  Though as Public Protector she is unaffiliated with any political party, she was previously a member of the African National Congress, the party that has dominated South African politics since the end of apartheid.  Her persistence in fighting corruption, though, seems to have come as a surprise to her former compatriots, who have resorted to personal attacks; the deputy defense minister, for example, recently accused her of being a CIA spy.  In a country which has been repeatedly criticized for inadequately addressing corruption, Madonsela’s investigations into cabinet officials and the police commissioner have provided one of the few signs of accountability.  Her report on the expenditures at Nkandla, which calls for President Zuma to make a partial repayment, is her highest-profile work thus far.

However, despite all the praise directed towards Madonsela—like inclusion in Time’s “100 Most Influential People” of 2014—the furor around “Nkandlagate” has revealed several severe limitations on the office of the Public Protector. Continue reading →

Improving OECD Convention Enforcement While Respecting Voluntariness: The Case for an Optional Protocol

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Jordan recently floated a very interesting idea on this blog about how to move forward in strengthening enforcement of the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention. As he pointed out, the Convention itself allows extremely limited means of enforcement: other than shaming noncompliant countries with scathing reports, there’s nothing that can be done within the existing framework. Since changing the Convention to include new sanctions is a nonstarter because noncompliant nations would need to accede to those changes, he suggested that willing members of the Convention “[d]evelop an extra-Convention agreement” to reward countries that live up to the terms of the Convention and “impose collateral consequences upon those who don’t.” The upshot of this extra-Convention agreement is that it would allow states to punish and pressure countries like South Africa, which has resisted the shaming effects of the Convention’s reports.

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Let’s Create Sub-National Corruption Perception Indexes for the BRICS

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For all their flaws, the major cross-country corruption indexes—Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), the World Bank Institute’s Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI), and the like—have been quite useful, both for research (at least when used appropriately) and for advocacy.  But one important limitation of these datasets is that by focusing on corruption (or perceived corruption) at the country level, they may obscure the fact that there can be substantial within-country variation in the level of (perceived) corruption.  This variation may occur across government institutions—the same country may have quite different degrees of corruption in the health sector, the police force, the judiciary, customs, etc.  More pertinent here, there may also be significant heterogeneity across regions, particularly in large countries with substantial political decentralization.  Indeed, numerous studies have exploited within-country regional variation in corruption levels to test various hypotheses about corruption’s causes and consequences; such studies include research on Italy, Russia, China, the Philippines, and the United States, among others.  But these studies typically make use of particular data sets that are not reproduced year-to-year.

As we’re starting to see rapidly diminishing returns from the major cross-country corruption datasets, it is high time for those organizations with the resources and capacity to compile information on corruption perceptions on an ongoing basis to turn their focus to within-country regional variation in corruption.  I propose the creation of a sub-national corruption perceptions index (snCPI), starting with the so-called BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa), which would gather and compile data (primarily perception-based data, perhaps supplemented with more objective data when available) on perceived corruption levels within the major sub-national units (states/provinces, autonomous regions, and municipalities) within each of those countries.

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Corruption and Shame in South Africa: Lessons from Current Events

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In his recent post, Jordan noted that the OECD Working Group on Bribery recently approved a “scathing” report on South Africa’s noncompliance with the Anti-Bribery Convention. He described group members’ frustration at hitting “a brick wall” as their criticisms fail to effect any change in South Africa. Noting that the Convention’s primary mechanism of enforcing compliance is shame created by critical reports, Jordan asked the very important and provocative question: “What if shame isn’t enough?” A future post will explore an option that might exist for changing, expanding, or enforcing the Convention, but there’s a prior, empirical question: How is the shame mechanism working so far? Continue reading →

What if Shame Isn’t Enough: The OECD and a Noncompliant South Africa

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Matthew recently expressed skepticism about proposals to expand the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention to countries like China and India.  As he explained, adding new parties may undermine the peer review system that is key to the Convention’s success.  To succeed, that system requires (in Matthew’s words) that “(1) countries are willing to issue harsh reports about their peers, and (2) countries care about the reports, and find bad reviews embarrassing and/or politically damaging.” But what if public shaming isn’t enough?  Imagine that a member state didn’t care enough to change its ways after critical reports.  What would be next?  Unfortunately, South Africa might help answer that question soon.

Last month, the OECD Working Group on Bribery (“WGB”) issued a scathing Phase 3 Report on South Africa’s compliance with the Convention.  As the FCPA Blog recounted, the OECD appeared to have “encountered a brick wall,” with the reviewing nations “repeatedly express[ing] exasperation with South Africa’s failure . . . to prosecute a single foreign bribery case.”  Calling the need for enforcement “imperative,” the WGB insisted that South Africa take “urgent steps” to address a host of infirmities; among other problems, the WGB found that South Africa had allowed political and economic considerations to impede investigations by the nation’s under-resourced anticorruption unit.  The OECD also took the unusual steps of (1) asking South Africa to submit a self-assessment and (2) threatening to “take appropriate measures,” including requiring an additional Phase 3bis review, to address South Africa’s continued compliance problems.

With South Africa’s ruling party under increasing fire for its failure to combat corruption, the nation’s 2014 elections could mark a turning point in South Africa’s antibribery efforts.  But what if they don’t?  What if continuing to embarrass South Africa through follow-on reports and a statement of noncompliance isn’t enough to jumpstart enforcement of the Convention in Africa’s largest economy?

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