PROCUREMENT
In May 2021, the Minister of Public Works and Infrastructure officially launched the Infrastructure Built Anti-Corruption Forum (IBACF) in partnership with the Special Investigating Unit, the National Prosecuting Authority and the Financial Intelligence Centre. It’s a potentially groundbreaking development, but can IBACF turn the tide against rampant corruption? By Gundo Maswime*
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IMIESA June 2021
Exploring new avenues to fight corruption
T
he IBACF initiative emanates from the Department of Public Works and Infrastructure, which is indeed fitting. This is the department that gave South Africa the 10-point Plan, which laid the foundation for all government procurement in the late 1990s, plus the subsequent legislative enactments. The public infrastructure sector is especially prone to corruption because the provision of capital goods is almost entirely outsourced within a segment that accounts for more than
8% of national expenditure. To correct the problem, and in the interest of evidence-based interventions, the state needs to tackle the underlying pathology. What’s obvious about the South African construction sector is that the quantum of corruption is significantly high, the incidents very frequent, with very few offenders imprisoned or sanctioned. Within this context, it’s revealing to see how other countries in Africa have approached the issue. Both Rwanda and Tanzania, for example, have had a measure of success in shifting the
