SA has been affected by corruption scandals with a frequency and intensity that seems always on the increase. The ANC reinforced and embedded corruption in 2007 by electing Jacob Zuma as its president and subsequently as president of the republic after the 2009 general elections. The cadres of the liberation movement insisted at the time that a vote for Zuma was not a vote for his alleged corrupt activities but a vote for the ANC. Yet as the Ramaphoria breeze shifts, South Africans are still catching the stench of putrefaction and the rot of corruption from the Zuma presidency. SA regressed markedly under Zuma, with huge opportunity costs hobbling our efforts to overcome poverty, unemployment and inequality. Jacques Pauw showed in The President’s Keepers how the South African Revenue Service (SARS) was infiltrated and corrupted. The impact has been felt in our pockets — a R700m shortfall in SARS collections due to poor economic growth and changing perceptions by South Africans deman...

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