Neelam Rahim | neelam@radioislam.co.za

3-minute read
10 April 2024 | 12:26 CAT

Taxi rank in Newtown, Johannesburg near the Nelson Mandela Bridge. (Alfonso Nqunjana, News24)

Johannesburg, Tshwane, and Cape Town are hotspots for corruption, accounting for over 70% of corruption complaints in South Africa.

This was revealed in Corruption Watch’s (CW) latest report, which indicated that the organisation received over 2,000 corruption complaints in 2023.

More than 12 years after its inception, CW said it had received more than 46,900 complaints of alleged corruption from whistleblowers.

CW noted that there was an average of 11 reports per day from every part of South Africa, “from ordinary people brave enough to expose corruption and the abuse of power.”

“The cities of Johannesburg, Tshwane, and Cape Town collectively account for 71% of corruption incidents out of the five municipalities with the highest number of corruption reports. The other two are Dannhauser and Matjhabeng at 15% and 14%, respectively,” said Corruption Watch executive director Karam Singh.

However, Singh said this does not necessarily make those three municipalities the most corrupt entities within the public sector.

He explained that CW receives various complaints from the national, provincial, and local governments.

Singh told Radio Islam International that the types of corruption allegations vary.

“The predominant type of corruptions the CW data was alerted to were in some cases related to procurement irregularities, misappropriation of resources, complaints relating to issues of fraud, bribery, extortion and abuse of power,” he says.

The data featured maladministration, a major area of concern counting for 34% of reports, followed by fraud (21%), employment irregularities (16%), bribery or extortion (15%), and procurement irregularities (13%).

Listen to the full interview on Radio Islam International with Muallimah Annisa Essack.