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SIU makes progress in corruption battle, but accountability challenges remain, Scopa hears

SIU makes progress in corruption battle, but accountability challenges remain, Scopa hears
Suné Payne
By Suné Payne
13 Nov 2024
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President Cyril Ramaphosa has signed off on a mass of Special Investigating Unit proclamations, but there are still concerns about a lack of action and consequences. This affects the ability of the public service to rid itself of the tag of ‘grand corruption’, as highlighted during a meeting at the public accounts committee in Parliament.

There have been 276 presidential proclamations on Special Investigating Unit (SIU) probes since its 2001 inception – most of which have been signed off in President Cyril Ramaphosa’s presidencies – but questions are still being raised in Parliament about corruption in state entities.

On Wednesday, 13 November 2024, the SIU and the Presidency briefed the Standing Committee on Public Accounts (Scopa) about presidential proclamations and reports; prohibitions on corrupt individuals holding public office or doing business with the state; and the vetting of officials working in supply chain management departments. 

Of the 276 presidential proclamations authorising SIU investigations issued since its inception in 2001, Ramaphosa has issued 135 proclamations or 48.9%, it emerged in Wednesday’s briefing. Since the beginning of this seventh administration, 19 proclamations have been issued, excluding the several issued last week.

In 2024, as of March, the SIU has managed to recover R1.4-billion in public funds. In comparison, in 2023, the unit managed to recover R921,370,783. 

These successes don’t come without challenges. Several times in Wednesday’s meeting, the words “revolving door”, “grand corruption” and “shocking” were heard from MPs about the SIU proclamations, which have investigated wrongdoing at state institutions. 

As committee member Patrick Atkinson (Democratic Alliance) said during the meeting: “The feeling is the game needs to be upped.”  

‘We go to court and freeze their pensions’


During the briefing, several questions were raised by committee members about implicated officials resigning and hopping from one municipality or state agency to another without facing consequences. 

Committee member Mazwikayise Blose (Economic Freedom Fighters) said this happened a lot in KwaZulu-Natal, where he came from. He said often these occurred in municipalities that had the same governing political parties.

“So if a political party is governing here and a particular municipal official is found in the wrong, he resigns, he goes and appears in another municipality governed by the same political party.” 

“And it seems that’s why I’m saying it’s syndicate because it seems like there’s just a select few of them remains in the system and then they just move around in different administrations,” he said.

In response, SIU head Andy Mothibi said, “The brief to the legal team is that if evidence points to these officials as having contributed to the losses of the state, we should, we should cite them as respondents… We should not hesitate citing them as respondents so that we also recover from them and hence where they resign.”

Mothibi said that if evidence pointed to officials, “we go to court and freeze their pensions”. 

Read more: SIU says officials must answer for poor record-keeping that hinders investigations

Blacklisting of companies and individuals 


While National Treasury has blacklisted businesses from transacting with the state, questions were asked about directors who were implicated in wrongdoing. 

As Blose asked, “But do we actually blacklist the directors?”

He said directors from companies working with the state simply opened a different company after being implicated and continued the same practices.

“When we blacklist Blose enterprise… But Mazwi Blose goes and opens a Mazi Enterprise and I come back and I’m still an assistant. Those are sort of the loopholes that are there.”

Mothibi said, “That is why the process has to be sped up.” 

Officials from the Presidency explained with a new central database from the Department of Public Service and Administration, individuals who worked in the state and had been dismissed could be checked via a centralised register.

Ideally, this should be checked before any interview. However, as Johnathan Tim from the Presidency pointed out, this was also dependent on local governments providing this information. Ideally, he said, this register would also be available to the private sector. 

How long does a proclamation take? 


The SIU was asked how long the process was for a proclamation. Mothibi said while the SIU, the Department of Justice and the Presidency had entered into a Memorandum of Understanding around proclamations and timelines, it would not change the fact that “the minister of justice and the President have to apply their minds”. 

As Mothibi put it, “but in some instances … it takes a while for the minister to apply his or her mind … in which case, some proclamations go beyond the indicative timelines”.

MK and State Capture


During the briefing, Kwenzokuhle Madlala, a member of the MK party, suggested the committee’s approach to issues of investigations and corruption had to be “able to nullify an impression that corruption started and ended with the threat of the so-called State Capture”. 

Madlala’s party has consistently tried to rewrite the history of his party leader Jacob Zuma’s role in State Capture.

“I feel that in the next 20 years, we’ll still be making the reference and saying ‘now State Capture this and that’. I think that we may be losing the bigger picture here because quite vast corruption has been reported for post the State Capture – the Covid [procurement] issues we are dealing with.”

The MK party has on several occasions – even at Scopa itself – lambasted State Capture and those implicated in it, but excluded some of its MPs named in the State Capture reports.

Read more: History revised — MK party shifts blame for State Capture at SOEs

Next week, the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) and the Hawks will brief Scopa on corruption cases referred to it by the SIU.

This was a sore point for some in the committee – some MPs said the SIU was doing good work, but this would not be presented before other law enforcement agencies. DM

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