News broke last Friday that the Public Protector’s leaked report into the Bankorp/Absa “lifeboat” scandal dating back to the dying years of apartheid rule called for Absa to repay over R2-billion to the South African fiscus. The public response was cacophonic. Depending on your vantage point, media reports suggested that this was one of two…
The death of former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon has renewed debate about his legacy, but there’s been little on its South African component. Even among Israelis, Sharon has long been a controversial figure. A career soldier, considered a brilliant strategist, but one with a history of insubordination, he brought to both his military and…
In another post, we’ve responded to recent claims that public accountability has eroded in the post-apartheid period. Whatever the current problems facing South Africa, we argue that there are no ‘better days’ to hark back to. Here are eight corruption scandals under the apartheid system that remain ‘open secrets’, for which no meaningful action has…
The huge batch of cables released last month by Wikileaks, dating from the 1970s, is a goldmine for researchers of power and profit in South Africa. But some of the stories we found in the cables are as frustrating as they are fascinating.
Despite evidence that political corruption may have been rampant during apartheid, there has been a surprising lack of political will to investigate “If there was corruption during Apartheid, why didn’t anyone hear about it?” A common and obvious question, with more answers than you might think. One answer is that people who lived through apartheid often did…