The 601 people who work at South Africa’s Special Investigating Unit (SIU) must never have a quiet day. As corruption has increased, so has their workload, but, more importantly, so has their output and achievements.
There’s good reason they have become a household name and were voted SA Institution of the Year by Daily Maverick readers.
If you look at the unit’s 2022/23 annual Trends Analysis and Performance Report, it becomes clear that its work has increased exponentially:
- 1,717 referrals (up from 1,384 the year before).
- 112 presidential proclamations issued and 45 motivations for proclamations requested between 2018 and 2023 (compared with 37 between 2014 and 2017).
- A huge increase in cash or assets recovered (R4.8-billion, most of it in recent years) and contracts deemed illegal (R25-billion, most of that too since 2019).
For this, National Treasury currently provides an annual grant of R452-million - a rare instance of value for money in the government.
The SIU came to greater public prominence with its “without fear or favour” investigations into Covid-19, including into high-profile figures such as former health minister Zweli Mkhize and Gauteng health MEC Bandile Masuku, both of whom were forced to resign after the SIU issued the reports of its investigations into allegations concerning their conduct.
Read more in Daily Maverick: People of the Year 2023: The awesome, awful and truly evil
However, those cases were just the tip of the iceberg. The proclamation granting the SIU powers to investigate allegations of corruption in relation to Covid-19 (known as Regulation 23) was granted in 2020. By 2023 the SIU had investigated 5,600 contracts, and issued a number of meticulous and detailed reports to the President with its findings and recommendations for action.
Without these reports it would not have been possible to get behind the tsunami of corruption around personal protective equipment, “fogging” of schools and government offices, and vastly inflated prices for hand sanitiser. And more recently its continuing investigations into Tembisa Hospital and the Gauteng health department.
According to Justice Minister Ronald Lamola, in recent years the SIU “was able to close 70,537 investigations under published proclamations, while 67,000 referrals were made for administrative action to regulatory bodies and 376 referrals for disciplinary action against officials and/or executives and 680 referrals to the relevant prosecuting authority for further action”.
In 2022/23 alone “through the Special Tribunal, the SIU recovered more than R388-million in cash and/or assets, while preventing the state from losing more than R2.1-billion”.
But although the SIU might be flavour of the year with Daily Maverick readers now, it’s important to know that it’s an adult institution that celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2022. A trip to and through its website leaves you with the impression of an organisation that serves with pride, is transparent (as far as possible given the subjects it works with), tightly managed and results- and data-driven.
In my years as a health and anti-corruption activist I have always found the SIU accessible, responsive and innovative.
Its head, advocate Andy Mothibi, is never afraid to look people in the eye or to account. In the past two years he has been a speaker at the two memorial services for murdered Gauteng health department whistle-blower Babita Deokaran.
Five years ago, I was with Mothibi when we formed the Health Sector Anti-Corruption Forum, a hitherto unimaginable partnership between civil society, business and law enforcement agencies. Since then similar forums have been formed around local government and construction.
But the SIU’s strength is not just in an individual. It has a senior leadership team that exhibits all the same qualities and that abides closely by a high standard of organisational ethics and values.
It starts with you
The SIU’s value chain starts with you, the member of the public or government employee who reports allegations of corruption. Its recommendations also end with you, with the SIU “calling on members of the public to continue to report corruption, provide as much documentary evidence as possible and ensure that they remain anonymous for their protection”.
Finally, although the SIU is a strong link in the chain of anti-corruption, we must remember that a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. The SIU is part of a criminal justice ecosystem that includes the South African Police Service, the Special Tribunal, the National Prosecuting Authority and the Hawks. For the SIU’s findings and recommendations to be acted on, all these bodies need to be fully resourced.
That is why, apart from measures to give greater protection to the independence of the SIU (for example, being able to institute investigations without presidential “permission”), a critical challenge in the years ahead will be to make sure that the tens of thousands of recommendations and referrals it has made are acted on, and that they are acted on swiftly. Indeed, as with the Public Protector, they should be legally binding. Unless this happens, its investigations will fall prey to that all too South African malaise: good on paper, but not implemented in practice. DM
This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R29.
