Graft is the killer hippo in the room
Politicians are too weak-kneed to act on state capture, irregular expenses and wasting of public funds
The well-chosen hungry hippo metaphor used by the finance minister last week is apt in many ways, especially as the hippo is the most dangerous large mammal to humans living in Africa. More human lives are lost in hippo attacks than to any predators in Africa — other than corrupt human predators, that is.
Navi Pillay, the SA judge who was a UN human rights commissioner, is famous for pointing out: “Make no mistake about it, corruption is a killer.” This comment is a truism that applies to the poverty-stricken in SA, as was concluded in a paper presented to the Towards Carnegie Three conference at the University of Cape Town in 2012 by Accountability Now under the title “The Effect of Corruption on Poverty”...
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