South Africa is far from being the corruption-plagued banana republic that some commentators imagine it to be. It is still possible, indeed normal, to receive services from state officials without having to grease palms. But two reports carried in this edition of the Mail & Guardian underscore why corruption remains a major source of worry.

The first concerns the African National Congress’s “business as usual” approach to its disgraced former chief whip, Tony Yengeni. Despite facing charges of fraud and corruption relating to his infamous 4x4, Yengeni continues to sit in the highest councils of the ANC and to rub shoulders with other high-ups in important party initiatives, including a top-level mission to overhaul party structures in the troubled Eastern Cape. Given the suspicions hanging over him, is he really the right person to sit in judgement on the probity of his Eastern Cape colleagues? And why is ANC officialdom vesting so much faith in someone who has shown blatant disrespect for the institution of Parliament and utter contempt for the organisation’s own self-proclaimed values and principles?

Coinciding with this is a survey by the Public Service Accountability Monitor (PSAM) suggesting that up to half of the Eastern Cape’s public servants consider it acceptable to take gifts from citizens for services rendered. Against this backdrop, the PSAM points out, provincial Premier Makhenkesi Stofile has defended and promoted an official, Bevan Goqwana, who admitted to running a private ambulance service, and defended his wife’s interest in a company that has landed state contracts, he appears to have been unrepentant about the provincial auditor general’s finding that his dependants irregularly used public money for plane fares.

What message does this, and the VIP treatment of Yengeni, send out to the public servants who already think there is nothing wrong with turning a private penny from public office?

The failure of South Africa’s anti-corruption strategy is not legislative or institutional. A plethora of state bodies exists to combat graft, including the special investigative unit formerly under Judge Willem Heath, the Scorpions, the Public Service Commission, the auditor general’s office and units in all state departments. Government has convened an anti-corruption summit and enacted codes of conduct for executive members.

New legislation is planned. The problem lies tat the level of implementation and political will. Leaders recurrently fail to lead by example and to take swift and uncompromising action against offenders in their own party.

Stofile, for example, could have instructed Goqwana, the Eastern Cape health MEC, to divest himself of his private business interests or quit government. He could have agreed to appoint a commission of inquiry into the Goqwana case, or referred it to the prosecuting authorities, as proposed by legislature speaker - instead of accusing the speaker of partisanship. From his large salary he could have repaid his family’s air fares, pledged there would be no repetition and apologised to the people of the Eastern Cape. Symbolically, such actions would have impressed on the province’s 120 000 public servants that the government is serious about protecting taxpayers’ money from private abuse.

Yengeni’s political rehabilitation sends the same signal - that other considerations, including party loyalty and patronage, matter more than clean government. From the outset, when ANC MPs ducked the issue of whether he breached the parliamentary ethics code, the sub-text has been one of covert sympathy and the desire to protect.

South Africa can have any number of anti-graft laws and agencies. But until public servants understand what it means to be corrupt, and that the authorities will not tolerate corruption, we will not roll back this grave and worsening ill.

With acknowledgements to the Mail & Guardian.