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South Africa: Operation clean hands

By on August 23, 2010
The South African Department of Housing announced that more than a thousand employees of the department and contractors have been indicted in a massive operation against corruption.

All this happens when the South African president has ordered investigations into several departments and when corruption deeply appears to ruin the reputation of the largest continent’s economy.
The report indicates that among the 1910 officials that were arrested, nearly 1300 are formally charged with embezzlement, corruption or non-compliance to public procurement.
The damage to this level of investigation, reported by the Ministry of Housing is more than two hundred million Euros.
This department has one of the largest budgets in the country in order to catch up with the large delays in housing policy, because of the apartheid regime at a time towards the black population, herded into townships.
Today, the impatience is going high and the ANC government, that prides itself on having built more than two million six hundred thousand homes in a decade, must be quick. The events to claim the best accommodations are recurrent, and many analysts fear a social explosion with unpredictable effects.
43 % of the population in South Africa lives under the threshold of poverty. The country sheltered the Football World Cup this summer, and today the population wonders about the utility of the infrastructures for which it contributed, and waits for the ANC government action.
Yet the Unions representing 1.3 million teachers, health care workers, and other civil servants went on strike, demanding an 8.6 percent pay increase and a higher housing allowance.

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