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South Africans don’t fall for Ramaphosa’s Act – 82% say Corruption is Same or Worse Under Cyril!

South Africans don't fall for Ramaphosa's Act - 82% say Corruption is Same or Worse Under Cyril!

Two-thirds of South Africans believe that corruption has increased in the past year, and half (49%) believe that it has “increased a lot.” Furthermore, a survey shows that people not only think that corruption has gotten worse under Ramaphosa, but also recognize that a large part of the elected officials and civil servants, who should be fighting corruption, are involved in corrupt activities themselves.

Perceptions of systemic corruption in South Africa have dominated public debates for two decades since the ANC was given a working first world country. In its many forms, corruption undermines the efficiency of the state, impairs the quality of public services, and ultimately destroys public trust. In South Africa, former president Jacob Zuma and some of his allies were accused of state capture, using the state for personal gain, destroying state institutions and government departments.

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In 2018, Cyril Ramaphosa’s promises to restore government integrity, strengthen democratic institutions with rapid development, gave a renewed sense of hope to South Africans, which unfortunately collapsed almost immediately, when the parastatals continued haemorrhaging  mountains of taxpayers cash.

Three years after Ramaphosa’s tenure, 80% of South Africans say that corruption has not changed or that it is worse! It is clear that Ramaphosa is only a better liar and a smoother speaker and a more skilled operator than Zuma, but the endemic corruption persists.

Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index for 2020 put South Africa at 44 out of 100 points, just a 1 point improvement over 2017. In 2020, the government was accused of stealing COVID-19 aid funds (Auditor General of South -Africa, 2020). Evidence of irregularities in awarding tenders related to COVID-19 response efforts (McCain, 2021) engulfed the health department in a scandal, that led to the resignation of health minister Zweli Mkhize, hours before a cabinet reshuffle (Tandwa, 2021). And corruption has hit the news again with the recent murder of a whistleblower in the Gauteng Department of Health (Klein, 2021).

The latest findings of the Afrobarometer survey of 2021 reflect these headlines: South Africans not only think that corruption is getting worse, but they also see that a large part of the elected officials and civil servants are involved in corrupt activities. The people say the government is handling the fight against corruption badly, while channels to report corruption are increasingly seen as unsafe and unsecure, with whistleblowers even disappearing.

The Afrobarometer survey team, led by the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation and Plus 94 Research, conducted an interview with 1,600 adult South Africans in May and June 2021. The team said that a sample of this size yields results at the country level, with an error margin of about 2.5 percentage points, at a confidence level of 95%.

State institutions are generally considered corrupt. Half or more of the citizens say ‘most’ or ‘all’ officials are involved in corruption, in the police (56%), the president’s office (53%), local government municipalities (51%), and parliament (50%).

The Afrobarometer found that seven out of ten South Africans say the government is doing “fairly badly” or “very badly” in the fight against corruption.

The Afrobarometer survey showed that:

  • Among citizens who have dealt with important public services in the past year, a significant proportion say they had to pay bribes to avoid a problem with the police (24%), or to obtain a government document (21%), police assistance (15 %), public school services (10%) or medical care (8%).
  • Three out of four South Africans (76%), say people are at risk of retaliation or other negative consequences if they report incidents of corruption, an increase of 13 percentage points compared to 2018.
  • Seven out of ten citizens believe that officials who break the law often or always go unpunished.
  • Despite the high visibility of corruption on the national agenda, almost 64 percent of South Africans say that corruption has worsened in recent years. Only 15 percent think corruption has decreased.
  • Despite the particular emphasis on anti-corruption efforts that the presidency supposedly focusses on, more than half (53%) of South Africans believe that ‘most’ or ‘all’ officials in the presidency are involved in corruption.

 

Listen and Read also: Who Captured Who? Ramaphosa Complements his Hijacked “Pick ‘n Mix” Zondo Commission on State Capture, which he Hijacked from Zuma!


 

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