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Title |
Country Corruption Assessment Report – South Africa |
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Author |
-- |
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Organizations |
The Government of South Africa and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime – Regional Office for Southern Africa (UNODC/ROSA) |
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Year of Publication |
2003 |
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Areas of Application |
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Description This Country Corruption Assessment Report will serve as a baseline to measure progress in combating and preventing corruption, as well as perceptions of corruption in South Africa. The Report combines the methodology of the United Nations Global Programme against corruption with the main strategic considerations of the Public Service Anti-Corruption Strategy. The format of the Report follows the considerations contained in the Strategy both for purposes of presentation, as well as for setting the monitoring and evaluation benchmarks. This Report provides, for the first time, a comprehensive overview of the phenomenon and nature of corruption in South Africa as well as the responses to it. Although comprehensive, it is not complete. There are still major gaps in knowledge of the incidence of corruption as well as in the systematic trends in perceptions of corruption. There are no consolidated statistics of corruption incidents or of the internal or external legal (civil, criminal and administrative) responses to such incidents. The statistics, which do exist, are ambiguous, because corruption incidents are often classified as fraud or theft in order to facilitate prosecution. Furthermore, there is also no central database of cases which would allow Government to learn from incidents in order to understand corruption better and to be able to design preventive strategies. The anti-corruption area is still under development, including the rounding of its legislative component. Coordination among various anti-corruption agencies only began a year ago (with the debate on a dedicated and centralised agency versus a devolved but coordinated anti-corruption mandate, although the latter is still under implementation). The Report describes the corruption scene, analyses the strengths and weaknesses of the counter-measures and proposes some remedies. For a report to be comprehensive even at this stage, it needs to be based on reliable information, parts of which are still lacking. Yet, it should be remembered that this Report is the very first of its kind in South Africa, and it was expected that it would be lacking in some important considerations. It does, however, reflect the state-of-the-art in the corruption and anti-corruption scenario within South Africa. |
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Further Information: Global Programme against Corruption, UN Office on Drugs and Crime, Vienna International Centre, P.O. Box 500, Room E1272, A-1400 Vienna, Austria. Tel.: +43-1-26060-4406 i Fax: +43–1-26060-5898 Website: www.unodc.org, www.pmg.org.za/docs/2003/appendices/ETHICS.htm |
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