Letter to Mahlamba Ndlopfu: Here’s a workable five-point plan for beating corruption

Comrade Leadership, forget the pillars, strategies, committees and action plans. Leave verbs alone: ‘strengthen, empower and ensure’. They are better off left lying low in the Oxford Dictionary.

By Bhekisisa Mncube

12 Sep 2025

Ah, Chief Dwasaho! Forgive the bluntness, but the country has developed a curious insomnia. At the same time, you sleep like a baby – on parliamentary benches, at international summits, even in the high-definition glare of live television.

South Africa counts sheep; Comrade Leadership counts Zs. And yet we wake up to the same lullaby: another advisory council, another strategy, another promise that the crocodile will eat last.

No magic wand

Your latest invention, the National Anti-Corruption Advisory Council (Nacac) final report arrived with trumpets and talking points, as though a fresh committee could frighten corruption into the confessional.

Really, my leader? Explain it to me slowly, like I’m in Grade 5: how must Professor Firoz Cachalia – an ANC ideologue with “no magic wand” – stop your cadres from treating the fiscus like a family trust fund?

The Nacac report sings three tired choruses until the ceiling peels: ensure (87 times), strengthen (54 times), empower (22 times). “Ensure alignment.” “Strengthen the Protected Disclosures Act.” “Empower whistle-blowers.” Lovely verbs. But verbs don’t lock up looters.

Here is the comic twist – comic in the way tragedy can be: the very cohort neck-deep at the feeding trough must ensure, strengthen and empower the very institutions meant to claw back what was siphoned at midday, right there in front of tender committees and finance officials who stamped the payments before the ink was dry. That is not a strategy; it’s a skit.

Swap the vocabulary test for three actions that matter: investigate, prosecute and recover. Until then, the hymn book remains in tune while the vault stays open.

Because I’m a stubborn citizen with an inconvenient affection for this Republic, I’ve been able to rewrite your five favourite pillars. Consider this an act of public service, free of charge, with the receipts filed in daylight.

Pillar 1: Empower citizens and protect whistle-blowers

Empowerment without protection is a pamphlet, not a plan. Start with a Whistle-Blower Justice Fund capitalised from recovered proceeds – not from the taxpayer. When we find the loot, a fixed percentage goes to the fund automatically, with no ministerial discretion and no “applications under consideration”.

Create safe houses managed at arm’s length from the state, with trauma counselling and 24-hour security: guarantee re-employment or salary-protected sabbaticals for whistle-blowers in public service and state-linked entities. Make retaliation a specific criminal offence with minimum sentences that bite, and bar retaliators from public office for 10 years.

Publish a 30-day clock: the clock runs from disclosure to protective action. Miss it? The accounting officer must explain the situation in writing to Parliament and the public within seven days. Empowerment is not a workshop; it’s a shield and a salary.

Pillar 2: Build partnerships across sectors

Partnerships are not selfies with CEOs and carefully curated panel discussions. Sign binding compacts – government, business, labour, civil society and the media – with measurable obligations and penalties. Companies must disclose beneficial ownership on every state contract and subcontract, within five days of award.

Labour must table corruption reports from shop-floor committees each quarter. Civil society gets legal standing to trigger investigations where thresholds are met. Media receives proactive disclosure portals and a statutory right to time-bound access to procurement data.

Every quarter, put all signatories on one stage with a public scorecard: green for delivered, amber for delayed, red for denied. Partnerships without consequences are networking events with better lighting.

Pillar 3: Increase transparency across all spheres

Transparency is not a slogan; it is a system ordinary people can use. Build a national e-procurement dashboard showing, in real time: tender adverts, bidder lists, adjudication minutes, evaluation scores, delivery milestones, change orders and every payment – line by line – across departments, entities and municipalities.

Make it searchable on a phone, not just a laptop. Add geotagged photographs of delivered goods and works. Name the project managers. Publish penalty clauses and apply them. Keep a public blacklist of crooked suppliers and the officials who waved them through – with dates and the rule breached.

If a document is “unavailable”, the accounting officer must file a sworn affidavit within 48 hours stating why and when it will be produced. Sunlight isn’t a metaphor; it’s a website with an audit trail.

Pillar 4: Ensure fair public procurement

“Fair” begins with professional buyers who can say no. Create a licensed procurement profession: exams, continuous training and the power to lose your licence for one dishonest award.

Break mega-contracts into smaller lots to end cartel feasting and open space for honest firms. Introduce reference pricing so that a R10 screw cannot masquerade as a R1,000 boutique innovation.

Make bid evaluation committees auditable by default; publish their names and declared conflicts. For large projects, ring-fence 10% of the contract value for independent verification – engineers, auditors and community monitors – paid from the contract, not the department’s tea budget.

Pay on delivery confirmed, not on dreams promised. And mandate a cool-off period of 12 months for any official leaving procurement to join a supplier or affiliate. If you can’t close the revolving door, install a turnstile that keeps count.

Pillar 5: Strengthen anti-corruption agencies

Strengthen, yes – but with teeth and timelines. Give investigators independent budgets and veto-proof, fixed-term leadership, and extend security to their immediate families.

Establish a Case Management Committee chaired by the NDPP to allocate cases, eliminate turf wars and issue a monthly public report: new arrests, preservation orders, indictments filed, trial dates set, convictions secured and assets disposed.

Build a national asset-recovery pipeline with numbers that matter: preservation within 72 hours, civil forfeiture in six to 12 months, disposal within 12 months thereafter. Channel the proceeds straight to the Whistle-Blower Fund and frontline services in health and education.

Publish a convictions dashboard with names, amounts, sentences and repayment schedules. If a “strengthened” agency doesn’t end in orange overalls, it’s housekeeping, not justice.

Same hangover, different wine

Now to your “groundbreaking” recommendation: the Office of Public Integrity and Anti-Corruption (OPI), dressed up as a Chapter 9 institution, purported to prevent, investigate and remedy corruption. In theory, it sounds like a cathedral of integrity; in practice, it risks becoming a cathedral choir – sweet harmonies, no arrests.

And the masterstroke? Absorb the Special Investigating Unit (SIU) into the OPI to look operational from day one, inheriting investigators, systems and recovery capability. Wow. Genius. Pour old wine into a new bottle and call it reform. The hangover is precisely the same when the same cadre carousel spins inside a different glass.

Comrade Leadership, forget the pillars, strategies, committees and action plans. Leave verbs alone: “strengthen, empower and ensure”. They are better off left lying low in the Oxford Dictionary.

Instead, my leader, I implore you to walk into the archives. Find Exhibit 1: Act 56 of 2008 – the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) Amendment Act that scrubbed the Directorate of Special Operations, famously known as Scorpions, out of the NPA. Read it slowly; do not cry.

Second, find Exhibit 2: Act 61 of 2000 – the amendment that created the Directorate of Special Operations and stitched it into the NPA Act, a birth certificate, in crisp parliamentary prose and legalese.

New script

Now, Comrade Leadership, let’s swap the script. Please take the 2000 scaffolding and add one stubborn line so history doesn’t repeat itself. Any dissolution of the Directorate may succeed only if 75% of the National Assembly approves. The director must be appointed by an independent panel set up by Parliament, with no politicians, and must enjoy tenure security like the judges.

I, son of MaMlambo, propose three tasks for the reimagined Scorpions: investigate, prosecute, and recover.

Prosecute in courts that understand complex crime, with minimum sentences that bite and no plea deals that turn grand theft into weekend aerobics.

Then recover every cent: freeze, forfeit, dispose, so the proceeds of the corruption fund the clean-up, not another banquet.

Finally, judges must do the hours: convict for serial grand corruption, orange overalls for life. For bail, treat large-scale looting like premeditated murder; if you can move millions at midnight, you can move witnesses by morning.

That, my leader, is a strategy: not the “ensure/strengthen/empower” gobbledygook, but dockets, dawn raids, handcuffs and holding cells.

We tried advisory councils, anti-corruption forums, nursing the Hawks into life; we perfected anti-corruption speeches. Now lock the watchdog into law with a 75% padlock and keep the looters out of Sandton.

Otherwise, leave the archives as you found them and apologise to the whistle-blowers’ families whose loved ones died while you dithered.

Till next week, my man. Send me nowhere, I quit. DM

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