Moneyweb reports that information released on Tuesday as part of Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index (CPI) show that SA is struggling to combat corruption in the public sector.

The 2021 CPI ranked 180 countries and territories by their perceived levels of public sector corruption on a scale of zero (highly corrupt) to 100 (very clean). According to Corruption Watch, a review of the country’s fight against corruption since 2012 demonstrates a “woeful stagnation”. In 2012, SA received a CPI score of 43, which ranked it 69th out of 176 countries assessed that year. Not much has changed since then. For 2021, the country maintained its 2020 score of 44, but dropped its ranking further to 70th out of 180 countries assessed. “It is extremely disheartening to find ourselves, year after year, in the same position on the CPI, with marginal shifts up or down,” executive director of Corruption Watch Karam Singh commented in a statement. Lack of real action, according to Corruption Watch, is the biggest problem the country faces in tackling corruption. “Statements and commitments from leaders to uproot corruption at its source have not manifested in any real consequences for the perpetrators of the widespread corruption that South Africa has experienced,” Corruption Watch pointed out. To reinvigorate SA’s fight against corruption, Corruption Watch said it was important to reform its procurement systems, restore and strengthen institutional checks on power, and establish independent well-resourced public oversight bodies that would detect and help prevent further decay.

• Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Akhona Matshoba at Moneyweb

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