President Cyril Ramaphosa made public on Tuesday a Special Investigating Unit (SIU) report into state spending in its response to the Covid-19 pandemic, which painted a damning picture of the most corrosive corruption levels.
The report highlights a plethora of cases involving contracts that were awarded irregularly where public funds were siphoned through corruption, fraud and illicit money flows. It further shows that hundreds referrals to the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) for criminal prosecution.
Yet not long after its release, questions were raised about whether anyone will ever be held to account for the R2.1bn lost to brazen criminality, despite the grand scale of the corruption.
This scepticism is borne out of the many similar high-profile cases of embezzlement of public funds reported, but we are yet to see any criminal prosecution taking place.
Take, for example, the evidence of wrongdoing that was led before the commission of inquiry into state capture for more than four years. Apart from the arrest of business person Edwin Sodi in the asbestos matter, Vincent Smith for the Bosasa saga, the Estina Dairy arrests and a few others, there has hardly been any notable high-profile arrests of those implicated in state capture.
In fact, the NPA only established a “task force” to focus on the state capture cases last week, following the release of part 1 of the state capture report.
This has certainly led to growing impatience and frustration among ordinary South Africans, justifiably so, about what appears to be a lack of interest from the NPA to prosecute some of the high-profile cases of corruption, from state capture to the personal protective equipment (PPE) scandal. This inaction has the potential to erode public trust in the criminal justice system.
We have also run out of patience because of disproportionate volume of criminal cases of political wrongdoing that have been brought to courts to date compared to overwhelming evidence in the public domain.
Whether by default of design, the NPA is guilty of injustice for dragging its feet on these cases and not prioritising them to restore the confidence of the citizens in the rule of law.
A deeper scrutiny is therefore needed to be focused on the NPA, its leadership and other law enforcement agencies given the experience of the past years where they were hollowed out, and the political environment they operate in.
Why are things not happening on their side yet we have reports such as the SIU's and evidence led before the state capture commission showing rampant corruption involving high-profile people?
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