[DEBATE] : (Fwd) Corruption

[Patrick Bond]

(With the great chimurenga musician Thomas Mapfumo spending next week in 
Durban at the Centre for Creative Art's Poetry Africa festival, I hope 
we get to hear his wonderful 1989 tune "Corruption, in the society." It 
made such a difference to public discourse when I lived in Harare, 
opening up a broad crit of Mugabe's cronies just after the Willowvale 
car distribution scandal. And it's long overdue to talk about 'austerity 
for the corrupt', for the parasites around Mugabe and Gono - and about 
generosity for the povo, don't you think? In Zim and SA both, for that 
matter.)

SA drops places in corruption survey

September 24 2008 at 07:23AM

South Africa has plummeted 11 places in a global corruption survey that 
has seen Denmark, Sweden and New Zealand ranked as the least corrupt 
countries in the world and Somalia as the most.

Last year, South Africa was ranked 43rd in the world with a rating of 
5.1 out of a potential 10 points on Transparency International's (TI) 
2008 Corruption Perceptions Index.

This year the country slipped to 54th position with a 4.9 rating.

Stopping bent practices such as cronyism and embezzlement can save lives 
in poor countries, Transparency International said on Tuesday as 
Somalia, Iraq and Myanmar again came bottom in its global corruption 
rankings.

Zimbabwe is also very far down the list, ranked at 166 with a rating of 
only 1.8. The Democratic Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Chad and 
Sudan are the other African countries rated below Zimbabwe on a list 
that numbers 180 overall positions.

"In the poorest countries, corruption levels can mean the difference 
between life and death, when money for hospitals or clean water is in 
play," TI said. "The continuing high levels of corruption and poverty 
plaguing many of the world's societies amount to an ongoing humanitarian 
disaster and cannot be tolerated," the organisation's head, Huguette 
Labelle, said.

Rampant corruption in low-income countries also jeopardises the global 
fight against poverty and threatens to derail the UN Millennium 
Development Goals (MDGs), according to the report.

This "calls for a more focused and co-ordinated approach by the global 
donor community to ensure development assistance is designed to 
strengthen institutions of governance and oversight in recipient 
countries, and that aid flows themselves are fortified against abuse and 
graft", TI said.

It estimates that unchecked levels of corruption would add $50-billion, 
or nearly half of annual global aid outlays, to the cost of achieving 
the MDGs on water and sanitation.

Somalia, the east African nation without a functioning government since 
1991, scored just 1.0 point on TI's range of between zero, which is 
highly corrupt, and 10, which is very clean.

The score is based on perceptions of the degree of corruption as seen by 
business people and country analysts. The places where officials were 
seen as least likely to line their own pockets were Denmark, Sweden and 
New Zealand, sharing first place with a score of 9.3 points, ahead of 
Singapore in fourth and Finland and Switzerland in joint fifth.

In 2007 Denmark, Finland and New Zealand shared the top spot.

But TI was also critical of some wealthy nations that registered 
significant drops in the global rankings, such as Britain, whose score 
fell to 7.7 points from 8.4 in 2007.

Britain fell to 16th in the rankings from 12th in 2007.

The continuing emergence of foreign bribery scandals indicates a broader 
failure by the world's wealthiest countries to live up to the promise of 
mutual accountability in the fight against corruption, TI said.

"This sort of double standard is unacceptable and disregards 
international legal standards," said Labelle. "Beyond its corrosive 
effects on the rule of law ... (it) undermines the credibility of the 
wealthiest nations in calling for greater action to fight corruption by 
low-income countries." - Sapa-AFP

          o This article was originally published on page 4 of Pretoria 
News on September 24, 2008