AYANDA DLODLO: Lifestyle audits will weed out corrupt public servants

Just like the Sword of Methuselah, lifestyle audits are designed to be a powerful weapon, wielded by trained government officials with the resources and capabilities to enable law enforcement agencies to defeat the monster of corruption and any other unethical behaviour, wherever it may raise its ugly head in the sphere of public service.

I must emphasise from the outset that I consider corruption to be an enemy of the people, and the government is determined to be seen to be effectively dealing with this monstrous albatross, which is weighing heavily around the neck of governance and pulling the country’s potential for economic growth down with it.

Needless to say, corruption hinders the ability of the state to provide a better life for all its citizens and robs communities of water to drink, shelter for their families, the supply of textbooks for pupils, medical supplies to save lives, job-creating opportunities and other basic necessities needed to live a life of prosperity.

We must wage a fierce and fearless battle against this demon of corruption and remove it from the public service. Lifestyle audits are a powerful tool that will aid us in this fight.

Ethics infrastructure

In our fight against corruption in the public service, it will become important that we do not take a piecemeal or pay-as-you-go approach in dealing with it, as it is a complex and deep-rooted problem. We must rather put in place systems and processes that will act as a bulwark against corruption and will remain intact long after we have gone.

It is for that reason that we are putting in place an ethics infrastructure in government that will institutionalise infrastructure for good and ethical governance that will accelerate the fight against corruption. The infrastructure will be made up of ethics officers and ethics committees in every department, which will act as watchdogs for good governance and ethics.

Detecting corruption

Corruption in the public service is a type of white-collar crime that is executed through obfuscated levels of decision-making and compliance. It hides behind the legitimate bureaucratic processes of government, which makes detection difficult and inadvertently creates conditions of plausible deniability for the perpetrators of corruption. We must therefore find other ways to detect the corrupt and weed them out of public service. A lifestyle audit is a powerful tool that can help us derisk the public service by identifying those who illicitly leverage systems and capabilities to abet crime and corruption.

Some public servants are not adequately held accountable for their acts and omissions, and through this initiative various means and possibilities would be identified so that the blind spots through which the furtherance of corruption is occasioned may be curtailed.   

It is not always clear which invoice that is being submitted for goods and/or services will corruptly benefit a public servant, but it is easier to detect a public servant who has corruptly benefited from a public procurement invoice when they spend those proceeds to augment and support their lifestyles.

Lavish lifestyles

It has been a general feature in public service to see people who lead lavish lifestyles that are not commensurate with their salary. We have seen multimillion-rand German sedans and Italian sports cars parked at government buildings and displayed on social media. We have also seen mid-level officials with obscenely expensive French designer clothes and wearing red-bottomed shoes, all ostensibly bought with the modest salary of a public servant.

We cannot continue to have public servants who live glamorous lifestyles financed by monies meant to provide basic services to the people, and to improve their lives and livelihoods. We will audit public servants’ lifestyles; we will detect those with unexplained wealth; and if found to be stealing from the public, we will remove them from the public service and prosecute them with the full might of the law.

Evidence of wrongdoing will be handed to law enforcement agencies for prosecution. This is time for the development of a professional, capable and ethical public service. It is a non-negotiable that this government intends to achieve, and we will spare no effort to ensure we protect public funds and deliver on the mandate given to us by SA citizens.

We will wield these lifestyle audits like the Sword of Methuselah in defence of public funds, and uphold the integrity of our country as a credible jurisdiction.

• Dlodlo is public service & administration minister.