Finding a system to replace Pay-as-you-steal

It reflects how normal the outrageous has become in South Africa that news of R10.6 billion of missing state funds elicits little more than a yawn. A story that in most countries would provoke banner headlines and demands for heads to roll, barely made the front page.

This is a substantial sum, about a quarter of what hosting the Soccer World Cup cost. Add in the other stolen and misspent money at national, provincial and local government level, and the figures start to be mind-boggling.

The Auditor-General could find not trace how or to whom the SA Social Security Agency (Sassa), which administers national welfare grants, paid the R10.6 billion. About 3% of the files randomly selected for audit had no documentation, while almost 10% of grant beneficiaries audited could not be authenticated.

All this is pretty indicative of Sassa’s relaxed approach to public funds. The agency recently told Parliament that in the year to end-June it had identified 79 416 public “servants” fraudulently receiving social grants.

Anyone watching television news a few weeks back will almost certainly have seen some of these shameless shysters. Since only 15 921 of the state-employed crooks were charged, the remaining 60 000-odd were doubtless prominent among the public-service strikers toyi-toying for pay hikes.

These scum — the ring-around-the-tub after the swill of those convicted was flushed out — were merely rapped over the knuckles in internal disciplinary inquiries. Each received a “final warning” not to steal from the poor and just over half of them, about 36 000, generously agreed to pay back in instalments what they had thieved.

Let’s just unpack the logic. You pay someone. They steal your money. You then pay them more, so that they can return your stolen funds without inconveniencing themselves. What a novel deterrent, a Pay-As-You-Steal scheme.

But one must not be too hard on Sassa. After all, the estimated annual R2 billion it has lost to fraud since its establishment 13 years ago is small change, comparatively.

This week it was reported that the Hawks had meekly ended all corruption investigations relating to the long-festering R60 billion arms deal. The investigatory targets, the German shipbuilders Thyssen, British Aerospace and defence procurement chief Chippy Shaik, can breathe a sigh of relief. That is, if they were ever overly concerned.

And over at Home Affairs, possibly the most dysfunctional ministry — against stiff competition from Land Affairs — revealed that it had some financial woes of its own. Its ninth consecutive negative audit uncovered R6.8 billion in pending legal claims and R99.8 million in unauthorised expenditure.

There was also irregular expenditure of R320 million, of which R261 million was on an electronic identity system for which the controversial contract was subsequently cancelled. This is clearly a private enterprise variation of Sassa’s Pay-As-You-Steal — here the government pays a company vast sums of money NOT to provide the goods and services they have contracted for.

There is also the news that justice officials defrauded the Guardian’s Fund of about R80 million. The fund administers money paid to the Master of the High Court for the benefit of various vulnerable people — minors, the intellectually incapacitated, unborn heirs and missing people.

But all is not lost. Public Protector Thuli Madonsela has warned that oversight bodies will “no longer tolerate” public-service corruption, while Public Service Minister Richard Baloyi said the government would not allow the state to be a “refuge” for “lazy” public servants.

Maybe the government should find its own creative, Sassa-style solution. Let’s call it Find’em-Charge’em-Jail’em. Or taxpayers could perhaps withhold payments until government anti-corruption moves get beyond rhetoric. Let’s call it Waste-Not-Want-Not.

Forensic report on Sassa