Corruption Destroys Fundamental Freedom: Mbeki [Sapa, 2007-04-02]

Publication: Sapa Issued: Johannesburg Date: 2007-04-02 Reporter: Sapa

Corruption Destroys Fundamental Freedom: Mbeki

Publication	Sapa BC-CORRUPTION-CONFERENCE
Issued	Johannesburg
Date	2007-04-02
Reporter	Sapa

Corruption distorts human values and freedom in all countries, President Thabo Mbeki said on Tuesday.

"... Corruption in all its forms and manifestations, constitute a process that negates the democracy and development the ordinary people need to transcend the boundaries of their world of poverty, underdevelopment and disempowerment," the president said, opening the 5th Global Forum on Anti-corruption at Sandton in Johannesburg.

The conference was being held in Africa for the first time.

Mbeki said anti corruption instruments alone were not sufficient to solve the problem. They had to be firmly located within a development and anti-poverty discourse.

"The anti-corruption discourse therefore is inseparable from broader goals of socio-economic development *1. They must be firmly located within a development and anti-poverty discourse that promotes citizen engagement, a people's contract that binds the democratic state to the citizenry and promotes the value of human solidarity and public accountability."

Over 1 500 delegates from more than 100 countries arrived for the four-day conference on preventing and fighting corruption.

They included ministers, heads of anti-corruption and law enforcement agencies, and officials dealing with governance, money laundering and customs.

Surveys released last week conducted by Markinor and the University of Stellenbosch found that at least half of South Africa's adult population believed corruption was widespread among public officials.

With acknowledgement to Sapa.

*1 Talking the talk is easy; walking the walk is much, much more difficult.

One of the realities of trying to eradicate corruption through socio-economic development is like the age-old problem of the chicken and the egg.

The reality in many or most countries on the African continent, including South Africa, is that corruption is skimming, deeply skimming, the means off the fiscus to provide anything over and above that portion required for day-to-day sustainment of the economy and which could then be used eradicate the need to engage in corruption.

It is far easier, cheaper and quicker to embark on the opposite route:

renounce corruption in its entirety;
slaughter all the scapegoats for corruption;
unequivocally, unceasingly and at all levels fight corruption through efforts and skills of the policing services and justice system with whatever resources are required; and
make all people really fearful of anti-corruption forces.

This option is both achievable and affordable - if there is the will.

Within 10 years corruption will reduce to sporadic and relatively minor levels, as opposed to its current systemic and grand scales.

Then take the rewards, that is the success dividend, and plough all those hundreds of billions of Rands per year back into the grassroots economy and to those with solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short lives and, voila your country will be a shining star, you will be an international hero and the Fishers of Corrupt Men will have to retire and go and cast for mullet in the lagoon.