Provincial Treasury Head, Mr Smiso Magagula addressed a contingent of Public Sector Lawyers on ‘conflict of interest in the public sector’ during the launch of the KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) Associations of Public Sector Lawyers in Durban today.
Magagula was representing KZN MEC for Finance, Ina Cronjé who could not attend the launch due to other state commitments, as she was invited to the launch to speak on interventions by the province aimed at preventing and combating fraud and corruption relating to the awarding of public sector contracts and tenders.
Provincial Treasury was invited together with three other guest speakers:
KZN Scopa Chairperson, Dr Makhosi Khaza, who spoke on ‘management of conflict of interest within government from a good governance point of view’, Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) General Secretary, Zwelinzima Vavi, who spoke about ‘the risk associated with allowing public servants and public office bearers to have business with the state’, and University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) Professor Karthy Govender, who spoke about ‘the constitutionality of a decision to bar public servants and public office bearers from having private business interest’.
They all had to speak under the colloquium topic: conflict of interest in the public sector. The main question was ‘should public servants and public office bearers be allowed to have business with the state?’
Speaking at the launch, Magagula said that this question has been around for a while not just in South Africa but all over the world. “It is so unfortunate that an answer has not been forthcoming, the reason being, this is not a straight forward issue” he said.
Magagula defined conflict of interest as a situation where a person, such as a public official, an employee or professional has a private or personal interest sufficient to appear to influence the objective exercise of his or her official duties, or a conflict between one’s obligation to the public good and one’s self interest, as in the case of a public office holder who own stock in the company seeking government contracts.
“There are many examples where public servants have benefited financially from doing business with government. Most of these officials do not even declare their interest in companies that benefit from government contracts, which is the clear contravention of the Code of Conduct which stipulates that public servants will serve the public in an unbiased and impartial manner in order to create confidence in the public service” said Magagula.
The challenge is that simply declaring the personal interest does not eliminate the existence of conflict. “Indeed for now the legal parameters only require that interest be declared and that an official recuses him or herself in cases where a conflict of interest exists” continued Magagula.
“In the province we have introduced a project code-named Unembeza (conscience) as one vehicle to combat crime. Those civil servants who think they are too smart and are able to hack into the government IT systems and effect fraudulent transaction, here is the warning – Unembeza is watching you and you will be caught.
The other intervention measures mentioned by Magagula are forensic investigations conducted by the Internal Audit Unit of the province where all cases of fraud and corruption are investigated for the purpose of bringing to book those suspected of such conducts. Provincial Treasury is also in the process of implementing other measures including contract management and price bench-marking mechanisms to deal with the problem of corruption in government once and for all.
For more information please contact:
Ntokozo Maphisa
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