The White-Collar Elephant in the Room: The human rights impact of private sector corruption in South African public procurement

Abstract

In order to lead effectively, governments are mandated by the citizens to provide public services. These services are provided through a public procurement system. The South African constitution provides that contracts for goods and services identified by the government should be carried out in accordance with a system which is fair, equitable, transparent, competitive and cost-effective. However, all too often, these principles are undermined by corruption which is engaged in by all actors within the public procurement system. Over the last two decades, the South African media have uncovered several scandals that have revealed how pervasive corruption has been within the South African government and its public procurement system. The intricate details of the impact on the economic and human development of the country have revealed themselves with the deaths of several children in pit latrines and the ever-increasing gap between the wealthy and poor. The focus of this thesis will be on the role that private actors, in their capacity as service providers to government, play in further entrenching corruption within South Africa’s public procurement system. It will identify the anti-corruption measures that are currently in place to detect, investigate and prosecute the perpetrators. It will be shown that the measures currently in place in the South African legal framework, though theoretically adequate, have been weakened through excessive manipulation and interference by the executive branch of government. Drawing from the civil observer mechanism that has been embedded into the Philippine government procurement framework, it will propose legislative reforms to increase the efficacy of public participation of individual South African citizens and civil society to further empower the public in combating the corruption engaged in by the private sector.