Corruption Watch research suggests authorities are working with crooks to deprive people of land

Corruption in South Africa is so endemic that we can assume with certainty that most people are aware of its presence in all layers of society and that they understand its daily impact on the public at large. At Corruption Watch, our data analysis based on tens of thousands of whistle-blower accounts, as well as our engagements with community members that add to our body of evidence, illustrate the suffering and struggles of ordinary people as a result.

Corruption in the land sector is a particular area of research focus — an area seemingly avoided by government when questions of accountability are asked.

It is infuriating that, almost three decades into democratic South Africa, we still grapple with the land question, which was meant to be a beacon of redress. Inextricably tied to the conundrum it presents is the manifestation of corruption and the state’s ineffective ways of addressing it.

It is one thing to recount the history, at times even romanticising the telling of it, of how land was captured from the natives — a narrative that is told as though the displaced descendants are emotionally, mentally, spiritually, historically, and economically removed from those traumatic events. The full atrocity comes into sharp focus, however, when it is viewed for what it is — an economic crime and an act of pure corruption.

But it is infinitely more criminal when the so-called liberators, those who call themselves champions of democracy and constitutionalism, unashamedly perpetuate the same injustices of the past while paying lip service to promises of reform and an end to wrongdoing.

As part of the second phase of Transparency International’s Land and Corruption in Africa (LCA) project, we embarked on a baseline study in four communities in KwaZulu-Natal and Western Cape, to gauge South African residents’ land corruption awareness levels and experiences. Corruption Watch is leading the LCA project in South Africa, which is one of eight countries participating across the continent.

We interviewed 66 households for this study, and found that in more than 18% of the total sample of 357 family units — including families from Zimbabwe, Zambia, Kenya, Uganda, Ghana, Cameroon, and Madagascar — community members believed wrongdoing is commonplace and widespread. They also were despondent and uncertain about the state’s interest in or ability to tackle the problem.

In contrast to Ghana and Cameroon, where approximately a fifth of households claimed to be aware of land corruption, 97% of persons from our own Bhambayi and Umlazi communities in KwaZulu-Natal, and Ceres and Vredendal communities in the Western Cape answered in the affirmative. More than 60% of local participants were willing to say that they have been directly affected, while the rest opted not to say or were unsure — a caution indicative of the volatility of the whistle-blower environment and the necessity to capacitate ordinary people with land corruption and land rights knowledge.