Service Delivery

We examine the implementation of public sector anticorruption strategies and study corruption trends within government departments and agencies tasked with delivering services such as housing, education, social welfare and land reform. In addition, we lead research projects that promote public accountability in public health care and promote efforts to ensure that people affected and infected by HIV/Aids benefit from treatment and prevention efforts.

Monitoring Corruption in the Delivery of Public Services in South Africa and Assessing the Effectiveness of Public Sector Anti-Corruption Strategies

The lack of an independent assessment of public sector initiatives to combat corruption as well as the manifest absence of civil society initiatives to monitor the impact of corruption on service delivery at national, provincial and local government level inspired the ISS Corruption & Governance Programme to embark on this research project. The project has three dimensions:

• Monitor the effects of corruption on service delivery by analysing corruption trends within specific national public sector departments and metropolitan areas. Current focal areas are the Department of Social Development, Housing, Health, Education and Local Government.
• Assess efforts by these departments/institutions to implement internal anti-corruption strategies, especially the Minimum Anti-Corruption Capacity (MACC) strategy.
• Measure the nature and impact of corruption on service delivery in key areas through the use of surveys of officials charged with corruption.

The overarching purpose is to assist with speeding up service delivery by monitoring the causes and incidence of corruption. The points below encapsulate the project’s immediate objectives:

• To highlight the effect of corruption on service delivery.
• Monitoring corruption trends within public sector departments and local government authorities tasked with service delivery.
• To assess the effectiveness of measures designed to combat corruption within public sector departments and local government authorities tasked with service delivery.
• To provide policy recommendations to improve anti-corruption measures/capacity and/or identify best practice within selected departments.
• To provide state anti-corruption agencies with data to assist in efforts to counter corruption with these departments.
• To assess the effectiveness of interventions by specialised anti-corruption agencies
• To identify departments and entities possibly most at risk of corrupt activities – from a citizen’s perspective.
• To provide civil society active in these areas with information to better monitor performance of departments tasked with service delivery.
• To document good practice where this exists for possible replication by other departments.
• To provide a baseline of information for future enquiry.

The Danish International Development Agency (DANIDA) funds the project.

Project Head:
Hennie van Vuuren, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , Programme Head, Corruption and Governance Programme.
Researchers:
Andile Sokomani, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it and Trusha Reddy, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , Researchers: Corruption & Governance Programme

HIV/Aids

The recent hike in international donor funds and domestic budgets of HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment efforts in Africa is finally beginning to match up with awareness and understanding of the pandemic’s impact on the continent. However, scrutiny of the use of these funds has mostly been neglected amongst the plethora of the issues in dealing with crisis.

In 2006, the ISS Corruption & Governance Programme in collaboration with Transparency International-Zimbabwe (TI-Z) conducted a groundbreaking study in Zimbabwe and South Africa. The effort of the commissioned researchers based in each country, was to unpack, state accountability mechanisms in place for national allocations and to highlight instances of and vulnerabilities for corruption in the prevention and treatment efforts.

Based on the experience and findings of the report (due to be launched in August 2007), the ISS takes the work forward this year and looks at three other countries in Africa: Senegal, Uganda and Kenya. Once again, partner organisations and commissioned researchers in each country have been identified and will assist with the implementation of the project.

The ‘governance and accountability’ approach has remained as government’s in the researched countries are viewed as being required to deliver on their HIV/AIDS mandate and may be held justifiably accountable to citizens/public. This research thus scrutinises the transparency, openness, fairness and effectiveness in delivery of the mandate. Specifically, it will interrogate HIV/AIDS rhetoric, policy and implementation of policy vis-à-vis corruption. The performance of the function of interrogation and scrutiny serves as a watchdog role on behalf of the public/citizens, especially those infected, affected and disempowered.

The objectives that were conceived by TI-Z thus largely remain. They include:

The broad aims of the research project (as determined by TI-Z) are:

• To strengthen understanding of the nature and forms of corruption in the region
• To play a crucial role through advocacy and lobbying in the formulation of policies discouraging and penalizing unethical corrupt conduct in the private and public sectors and in the public in general
• To enhance the demand of transparency and accountability in public affairs and in international business transactions

The specific objectives (as determined by TI-Z) are:

• To ascertain the prevalence of corruption in institutions administering HIV/AIDS funds in the region.
• To establish the nature and extent of corruption in these institutions
• To identify causes of the various forms of corruption
• To establish best practices and monitoring mechanisms and recommend these to policy makers
• To advocate for an information campaign through the media in the countries

Project Head:
Robyn Pharoah (commissioned)

Land Reform

The Corruption and Governance Programme is involved in a scoping study on the governance of land in South Africa. The study seeks to clear the way for establishing a comprehensive conceptual land governance framework, which will help reinforce analysis of South Africa’s key land issues that can be addressed through land policy and administration reform. The initial findings emerging from the study suggest that governance remains a precondition for economic and social development; the governance of land is increasingly recognized as one of the most problematic and corruption-prone sectors; poor governance in the land sector has enormous negative impacts on development processes and poverty eradication; greater attention should be given to the critical institutions that govern the use of land.

The study highlights the specific manifestations of weak governance in South Africa’s land sector. So far the following conditions have been identified:

•    Misappropriation and mismanagement of funds – The AgriBEE Fund and the Mafundisa Fund, both administered by the Land Bank to emerging black farmers, emerged as most vulnerable to abuse by the Bank Staff, Land Commissioners, Directors-General, and Attorneys entrusted with registering the transfer of property to beneficiaries
•    Opaque election of trustees – Restitution settlements are often held in Trusts on behalf of the beneficiary communities. Ownership thus becomes vested in the Trustees, who are usually neither beneficiaries nor democratically elected. The result is Trustees who are not democratically accountable to the beneficiaries.
•    Corrupt trade in community membership – Beneficiary access to land in South Africa, whether it is through restitution or redistribution, is mostly based on accepted group membership. Land rights are not given on an exclusive individual basis. There is thus a perverse incentive for individuals to buy and sell access to community membership.
•    Integrity of land valuers – Government wants to purchase claimed properties at the lowest price possible while property owners want to sell at the highest price possible. The same piece of land then tends to be valuated differently, depending on the client that the valuer serves. This calls into question the professional integrity of the valuers.
•    Corruption of traditional authorities – Traditional authorities under colonial and apartheid rule, including chiefs and headmen, acquired greater power over land than it was previously possible under pre-colonial regimes. This created opportunities for abuse of power and corruption, where chiefs and headmen allocated themselves prime land and exacted unreasonable payments for allocations. In addition, post-colonial customary law entrenched this dynamic by electing traditional authorities as custodians of land on behalf of their people, providing opportunities for chiefs to claim land for themselves and approve corrupt mining deals, development projects and tourism ventures.
•    Unavailability of a complete list of land claims – The complete list of land claims lodged before the 1998 deadline has not been published, which makes it vulnerable to manipulation by those who have exclusive access to it.

Project Head: Andile Sokomani