Despite its score advancing a notch in the Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), from 43 to 44, South Africa still ranks among countries that are deemed to have a serious corruption problem.

The 2019 CPI report, a leading global indicator of public sector corruption, was released on Thursday by global civil society organisation Transparency International.

The 180 countries and territories involved are ranked by experts and business on their perceived levels of corruption in the public sector. The scale used is zero to 100, where zero is highly corrupt and 100 is very clean.

Corruption Watch executive director David Lewis said this year’s report highlighted the importance of the relationship between money, political power and corruption.

He explained that the regulation of electoral funding seemed to play a significant role in how corrupt a country was.

He said countries on the index with strong regulations around campaign finance seemed to perform better, while lower scoring countries either did not regulate campaign funding or did not sufficiently enforce it.

Lewis said while South Africa’s Parliament had passed the Political Party Funding Act in January, president Cyril Ramaphosa had yet to bring the Act into operation.

He said a lack of political will to enforce important legislation to regulate political funding would create the perception that the country was not doing enough.

“The failure, after a year, to bring the Political Party Funding Act into operation does little to inspire confidence in the strength of government’s will to tackle corruption. In addition, the South African public has made it clear that until there is visible progress in prosecuting those responsible for corruption and until there is visible improvement in the ability of State-owned enterprises to deliver their vital services, government’s promises to combat corruption will not be trusted,” Lewis stated.

Sub-Saharan Africa

With an average score of 32, Sub-Saharan Africa is the lowest-scoring region on the CPI, which is indicative of high levels of corruption and inaction in tackling it. 

Surpassing South Africa on the index is Senegal with a score of 45, Sao Tome and Principe scored 46, Namibia and Mauritius came in with scores of 52, Rwanda scored 53, Cabo Verde is at 58, Botswana has a score of 61 and leading in sub-Saharan Africa is the Seychelles with a score of 66.

The perception in the region is that money is used to win elections and buy influence, despite the African Union’s Convention on Preventing and Combating Corruption.

“The toxic influence of money in politics would also be exposed and constrained were we to commence with promised lifestyle audits of politicians and public officials, to introduce more stringent application of regulations governing asset and income declarations and to require companies to identify their beneficial owners,” Lewis said.

In addition to ranking countries according to their perceived levels of corruption, the CPI report recommends reducing possibilities for special interest involvement in disbursement of budgets and public services; eliminating conflicts of interest; regulating political lobbying and sanctioning misinformation campaigns; and strengthening protection of whistleblowers, journalists and activists.

Click here to download a copy of the report.