South Africa’s civil servants have scored more than half-a-billion rand in government tenders, which were irregularly awarded to their spouses and relatives.
An investigation by auditor-general Terence Nombembe into government officials who moonlight as business executives, found that more than 2000 were involved in tender-rigging and corruption worth more than R610-million.
He has recommended disciplinary action and a tightening of government procurement systems.
The civil servants awarded tenders to companies owned by themselves, their spouses or their relatives.
The report was presented to parliament in April this year but was never formally discussed because parliament was winding up its business ahead of the general election.
It paints a bleak picture of an administration in shambles where corruption, misspending and flagrant abuse of public money is the order of the day.
The auditor-general found that between 2005 and 2007 government officials in eight of the nine provinces cashed in on tenders worth R540-million. KwaZulu-Natal is still being audited.
The remainder of the R610-million was fleeced by officials in national government.
The auditor-general’s findings included:
# Government officials in Limpopo got the lion’s share of the deals, with more than R260-million worth of tenders shared by 900 officials;
# In Mpumalanga, a total of 573 employees shared contracts worth R115-million;
# About 70 senior officials — and their spouses — in national government departments between them owned 72 companies which scooped tenders worth more than R70-million. One of the officials won a tender worth R20-million from the Department of Foreign Affairs;
# Senior officials involved in administering tenders manipulated tender processes to award lucrative contracts to colleagues and relatives; and
# The majority of government officials who benefited from state tenders had not asked for permission to do paid work outside their public service employment, and did not declare it.
Derek Luyt, head of media and advocacy at the Public Service Accountability Monitor, an independent organisation that monitors the misuse of public funds, said he believed the report was “the tip of the iceberg of corrupt employee-private entity relationships”.
These corrupt ****ers will just keep getting voted in.
