Effectiveness of South Africa’s Legislative and Institutional architecture to combat Public Sector corruption

Abstract

In South Africa major corruption scandals: the ‘Arms Deal’ (1999), ‘Travelgate’ (2005), Nkandla (2015), State Capture (2016) and ‘tenderpreneurship’, have occurred at national, provincial and local government levels. Local government, particularly, is riddled with maladministration, mismanagement of public funds and abuse of resources by officials and some municipalities have virtually collapsed. Against the background of accountability and transparency failures at national, provincial and local government levels, the research question to be investigated is: What legislative and institutional architecture exists to combat public sector corruption and how effective is it? The methodology is based on a desktop analysis in terms of a comprehensive literature survey and official documents to conceptualise and contextualise the area of investigation. The methodological approach focused on specific dimensions of unobtrusive research techniques, such as conceptual and document analysis. Generally, unobtrusive research techniques investigate social behaviour to remove bias and encourage conceptual analysis (Auriacombe 2016). To attribute meaning to the data, the information generated is examined through an in-depth process of intellectual analysis, integration, classification, reflection and synthesis. The main finding of the study is that South Africa has well-developed anti-corruption legislative and institutional architecture to combat public sector corruption in place, but operationally it is ineffective.