Poor governance, ethics root cause of corruption – Batohi

Batohi was speaking at the launch of the Local Government Anti-Corruption Forum and the Local Government Ethical Leadership Initiative in Pretoria on Tuesday.

The forum was established in October 2020 to bring together various stakeholders in the fight against corruption at the local government level.

Batohi says the lack of service delivery in municipalities is one of the consequences of corruption.

"Colleagues, let us face it, the root cause of corruption, particularly in the municipal space has been a lack of good governance and ethical leadership and that is where we need to focus, let us be very clear, we are not going to investigate and prosecute ourselves out of this problem, we are not going to do that.

“As long as we do not deal with the root cause. How regularly do we have service delivery protests? And why are the people of this country dissatisfied? That is what corruption has done in this country.

"The challenge is that the inability to deal with service delivery lands upon law enforcement and so we are required to deal with the protest, arrest people, we can't make criminals of ordinary South Africans who are protesting because we are not delivering services. We need to understand that, we need the upfront departments to make sure that we are doing what we need to do to ensure that we have systems and processes to ensure that the opportunities to be corrupt are reduced.

“And one of the biggest issues has been political interference, we need to face it," said Batohi.

Minister of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma echoed the sentiments expressed by Batohi.

"What is the role of leadership? If we do the right thing where we are, the entire organisation will do good. As leaders, we must be conscious of the organisation, and make sure that right is done. From ward level right up to this room. We must make sure there is accountability.

"It is people who do wrong, not the institution. It is not local government. Who is the local government? As leaders, we must take responsibility," said Dlamini Zuma.

Meanwhile, Hawks head Godfrey Lebeya said the unit is currently investigating 291 priority matters, of which 75 are already on the court roll while 29 are being considered by the NPA for prosecution.

He said there are 452 cases which affect municipalities and 122 cases are already on the court roll.

At the same time, the head of the Special Investigation Unit Andy Mothibi said the unit has identified sectors vulnerable to corruption.

He said the unit is also strengthening investigations and the recovery of money lost to corruption in local municipalities.

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