SA has been affected by corruption scandals with a frequency and intensity that seems always on the increase.
The ANC reinforced and embedded corruption in 2007 by electing Jacob Zuma as its president and subsequently as president of the republic after the 2009 general elections.
The cadres of the liberation movement insisted at the time that a vote for Zuma was not a vote for his alleged corrupt activities but a vote for the ANC. Yet as the Ramaphoria breeze shifts, South Africans are still catching the stench of putrefaction and the rot of corruption from the Zuma presidency.
SA regressed markedly under Zuma, with huge opportunity costs hobbling our efforts to overcome poverty, unemployment and inequality.
Jacques Pauw showed in The President’s Keepers how the South African Revenue Service (SARS) was infiltrated and corrupted. The impact has been felt in our pockets — a R700m shortfall in SARS collections due to poor economic growth and changing perceptions by South Africans demanding accountability and transparency by withholding compliance.
When we increase VAT by a point to 15% and take money away from capital investment to fund free higher education we are only plugging holes in the short run. In the long run, as together we pull up our sleeves for labour absorptive and inclusive economic growth, we have to root out the corruption embedded in our society.
Some will accuse me of taking the moral high ground and sermonising about right and wrong. Economists are not known for this as the field does not distinguish between bad and good taste, although the growing field of behavioural and experimental economics will have a say on taste as it evolves.
The economics of corruption is a growing field of research in SA, influenced by international empirical and theoretical work.
In a research report titled Betrayal of Promise, South African academics have contributed by providing us with an opportunity to carve off a broader concept more susceptible to economic analysis. These include monetary payments to agents (both public and private) to induce them to ignore the interests of their principals and instead favour the private interests of the bribers.
The research concentrates on quid pro quo deals where ordinary people, businesses and public officials may behave in a corrupt manner if the rewards are high enough. This brings me back to the Zuma presidency. Many South Africans did not believe a man of stature such as the former president would ever have his day in court. This view arguably has to do with our experiences in sub-Saharan Africa, where leaders of corrupt states have got away with impoverishing their people and bankrupting their own governments.
A recent example is Robert Mugabe, who was removed from office but is yet to account for atrocities against his own people and the economic meltdown of Zimbabwe.
One would have expected Zuma’s upcoming court appearance to inspire South Africans to confront corruption by encouraging and supporting the prosecuting authorities to bring all those implicated to book. However, some of us see him as a victim of political jealousy in the governing party because of his achievements as the father of "radical economic transformation".
But is the hollowing out of institutions such as Eskom, South African Airways and the Passenger Rail Agency of SA and the disappearance of whistle-blowers really a valiant attempt to defeat "white monopoly capital"?
The Zuma presidency epitomised SA’s moral decay and the actions of the state capturer-in-chief should be unconditionally condemned. Let the law take its course.
• Mondi is a senior lecturer at the Wits School of Economic and Business Sciences.
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.