From: Sonja ter Horst [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: 30 January 2012 13:49
To: David Raphael; Observatory CommunityCentre; Tracy Berry;
[email protected]; Liz Geyser Geyser; Woodstock SAPS
Subject: corruptionwatch.org.za
corruptionwatch.org.za
A new independent civil society anti-corruption institute has been launched
- Corruption Watch. It is headed by David Lewis, the veteran trade unionist
who was the chairperson of the Competition Tribunal with board members Thuli
Madonsela, Bobby Godsell, Adila Hassim, Mary Metcalfe, Mavuso Msimang,
Archbishop Njongonkulu Ndungane, Vuyiseka Dubula and Kate O'Regan.
With their website social media and an SMS line, they plan to gather reports
of corruption and "heat map" corruption hotspots. They'll aggregate what
they gather and use it to initiate research, commission reports and publish
what they come up with online. They plan to work with organisations
throughout the country to share information, engage in policy-based advocacy
and bring corruption out into the light.
According to the Special Investigating Unit government loses about
R30-billion a year to corruption. The auditor general's report recently
uncovered R26-billion in unauthorised expenditure in 2010-11, and found that
just three out of 39 government departments and 106 out of 272 state-owned
enterprises had clean audits for 2011. A recent survey found that 83% of
adults believe that corruption is just a way of life in South Africa.
The public can report corruption or sign the pledge on
corruptionwatch.org.za
or on Facebook (CorruptionWatch)
or Twitter (@corruption_sa or follow #corruptionwatch).
SMS "BRIBE" to 45142 to report corruption,
or "PLEDGE" plus your first and last name to sign the pledge.
Read more in the article below from the Mail & Guardian.
Regards
Vanessa Burger
Umbilo Action Group
0828477766
'Evil flourishes when good men do nothing'
_____
A web of watchdogs and whistle-blowers
DAVID LEWIS: CORRUPTION Jan 27 2012 12:39
How many of you reading this have experienced corruption in some form? You
were asked for, or paid, a bribe; you work for a company that has secured
lucrative state contracts through bribery or other inappropriate
relationships; you are in a position of power and routinely dispense
"favours" to those who need the services that your organisation provides.
A recent survey says 56% of South Africans have been party to, or victims
of, corruption.
Corruption Watch is an independent civil society institution that will
gather information, build alliances and help the public to take a stand
against corruption.
By addressing both the demand and supply side of corruption, the
organisation will ensure that the custodians of public resources act
responsibly to advance the interests of the public and that their positions
are respected by those in the private sector who engage them.
This week we launch several communication platforms that will enable the
public to report any knowledge of corrupt practices.
The way we interact with each other, meet each other and tell stories to
each other suggested that Corruption Watch should engage the public through
social media -- the internet, Facebook and Twitter -- as well as SMSes.
We will combine the voices of many individuals, thereby enabling the public
to become effective, active participants in combating corruption instead of
helpless victims.
Sceptics say our citizens lack internet access. We have thought deeply about
this and will provide alternative mechanisms of communication. But we have
great confidence in what will principally be a digital communications
platform. One has only to recognise that many of the viral, digitally based
social movements have taken place in countries poorer than ours, sometimes
with levels of digital connectivity as bad, or worse than, our own.
Kenyans, for example, developed the Ushahidi crowd-sourcing and mapping
application for cellphones during the post-election violence in 2007. This
technology has subsequently been used to find survivors after the earthquake
in Haiti and the tsunami in Japan.
"Citizen cartographers" in Nigeria and Tanzania report water problems and
broken pipes by SMS; students in Dar es Salaam map roads, drains and
streetlights on their cellphones for an urban upgrading project; and Kenyans
have found that the condition of only 25% of health facilities and schools
match official data.
Like Corruption Watch, the "I paid a bribe" websites in India and Kenya
collect stories from the public, whereas fed-up citizens and journalist
bloggers in Russia and China regularly report public figures living beyond
their means or enjoying special privileges. One Chinese site has simply
published pictures of the wristwatches of identified public servants and
party officials. Sound familiar?
In any event the distance between the bush telegraph and the web is far
shorter than is commonly believed. If people want to communicate urgently,
they will find ways of doing so. Before we launched and had a telephone
number, let alone a website, people were finding us from Limpopo, the rural
Eastern Cape and elsewhere.
People can also contact us by SMS (at R1 a message). Our staff will work
with community organisations to help us reach people for whom internet
access or the cost of an SMS are insurmountable. And when we are working on
large, endemic cases of alleged corruption we will make face-to-face contact
with interested parties.
We will release reports on the Johannesburg Metro Police and the healthcare
sector shortly. We will make these reports available to the public on our
website, but we will also target particularly interested parties and invite
them to read the reports and the responses of the public online.
The information from the stories people tell us and the mainstream media,
governmental and private-sector reports and surveys will be aggregated and
analysed. Sometimes we will spot patterns and investigate a sector of the
economy, a municipality, a tender process, or a person. When the information
reveals endemic, systemic corruption, we will use a network of organisations
to help people stand up to it. In doing so we will achieve one of our main
objectives: to strengthen both the scale and the voice of civil society.
The personal details of anyone reporting an incident will be kept
confidential and each report will be combined with others to help us build a
"heat map" of when and where corruption is occurring around South Africa.
The success of Corruption Watch depends on your stories and your
participation. We are all degraded by corruption -- it erodes our
institutions and threatens our democracy. Much of it involves the public
sector and the public purse, and the poor, who depend on the government for
their support, most keenly feel the brutal effects of corruption.
Help us: tell us -- and one another -- your stories.
_____
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