Anti-corruption organisation, Corruption Watch (CW), has distanced itself from President Cyril Ramaphosa’s claims that his administration had defeated corruption.
This comes after claims by the president that even civil society movements such as Corruption Watch had seen a decline in corruption following years of state capture under the previous administration.
On Wednesday, CW through its spokesperson, Oteng Makgotlwe, rubbished Ramaphosa’s assertion.
“The president said commentators like CW have seen incidents of corruption going down in this term. We object to being referenced in this way as part of an electioneering campaign. CW refutes the president’s statement and rejects to being referenced in this way as part of electioneering campaign. The organisation emphasises that the number of reports it receives or the research it does is in no way a conclusive overview of the entire corruption situation in South Africa but is merely one facet of the whole,” it said.
Last week, Ramaphosa who signed the National Health Insurance (NHI) Bill into law, said his government had learned lessons from COVID-19 corruption and would not repeat the mistakes with the NHI.
During an interview with 702 this week, Ramaphosa said that even institutions such as CW were reporting that they had seen corruption going down under his administration.
Corruption Watch characterised Ramaphosa’s statement as some “mis/disinformation”.
Its executive director, Karam Singh said even though reports had declined in numbers it did not mean that corruption had gone down, as some of the tools used to track levels of corruption suggested otherwise.
“There are many factors at play when we speak about reports and trends of corruption in South Africa. While the number of reports received by our organisation may have declined in recent years, this is no way a reflection on either the state of corruption in the country, or the progress in fighting it.
“On the contrary, it would be safe to say that the levels of corruption have been on an upward trajectory for over a decade as evidenced in tools such as the Corruption Perception Index, and that despite the numerous organisations and institutions now doing their best to tackle this problem, the battle has not been won,” Singh added.
The Star