SACBC on Ramaphosa’s Implementation Plan for State Capture Report

The bishops of Southern Africa have condemned “the greed and the indifference displayed by the business and political elite in our country” which has caused “high levels of public sector and private sector corruption”, and called for “a new vision of politics and economy”.

In a statement on President Cyril Ramaphosa’s implementation plan for the State Capture Report, the Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference said the widespread corruption has diverted “resources that the country needs to recover from its legacies of economic inequalities and poverty”. The bishops called for cooperation in adopting a new vision of politics and economy “guided by the common good and the concerns of the most vulnerable in society, not the narrow interests of the business and political elite”.

The statement, signed by SACBC president Bishop Sithembele Sipuka, welcomed the broad reforms proposed by Ramaphosa. In particular the bishops backed a new appointment process for the heads of law enforcement agencies and the boards of state-owned enterprises, procurement reforms, whistleblower protection, and the review of political party funding act to criminalise making donations with the expectation of procurement benefits.

But the bishops warned: ”At the same time, we note that the proposed measures to strengthen good governance will not bear the intended results if the entrenched cadre deployment policy is not discontinued. We would therefore like to see a more decisive commitment from the ruling party to ending cadre deployment.

While proposed measures to “strengthen the justice system to ensure the successful investigation and prosecution of those implicated in state capture and other forms of corruption” is welcome, the bishops warned that an investigative directorate, despite its permanent placement in the National Prosecuting Authority, “will not be sufficiently independent of the executive as it can easily be closed down by a simple majority of parliament, as had happened with the case of the Scorpions”.

“Therefore we join the civil society in demanding that the government establishes an anti-corruption body as a new chapter 9 institution, with a mandate to investigate and prosecute serious corruption cases, which cannot, therefore, be closed down by a simple majority of parliament,” the bishops said.

They called for “concrete and decisive action” against politicians implicated in the Zondo Commission’s report.

“Those involved in the state capture continue to serve in the cabinet, and the president is vague about what he will do to hold them to account. We are disappointed that the president has not been decisive on this matter and are concerned that once more political expediency, particularly in relation to the upcoming ANC’s elective conference, seems to prevail over the good of the nation. We ask the president to announce as soon as possible how he will hold to account the cabinet ministers implicated in the Commission’s report,” the bishops said.

They counselled that implementation of the Zondo Report will lack credibility “if it is only the middle-level government officials who are prosecuted and held to account while the senior-level politicians implicated in the state capture report and other allegations of corruption get off scot-free. We need assurance from the president that senior-level politicians and cabinet ministers will not be shielded from accountability.”

The bishops also warned Ramaphosa that the implementation of the Zondo Report “will continue to lack credibility if the president fails to take the country into his confidence regarding the alleged crimes of financial misconduct and defeating the ends of justice from his Phala Phala farm”.

The bishops also called on Parliament to publish its own implementation plan of the report. Such a report should detail how it will address the Commission’s complaint that Parliament has consistently failed in its responsibility to hold the executive to account, with the ruling party often using its numbers in the Houses of Parliament to frustrate any attempts at holding the executive to account, the bishops said.

“The people of this country need assurance that the parliament will not continue to protect politically connected people when they are implicated in corruption allegations, including the recent claims of transgression against the law by the sitting president from his Phala Phala farm,” they said.