Professor Christopher Stone warned those discussing and developing an anti-corruption strategy at the National Anti-Corruption Dialogue never to underestimate the systemic nature of corruption and called on them to learn from international experience.
The American criminal justice expert and Professor of Practice of Public Integrity at the Blavatnik School of Government at the University of Oxford, addressed stakeholders at the Dialogue, which is taking place in Johannesburg.
Drawing on experiences in countries such as Brazil that also continuously dealt with high levels of corruption in State entities, Stone said strategies did not need emulation but rather innovation.
“What international experience can do is alert you to traps others have fallen into. One of those mistakes is to underestimate the systemic nature of the problem.
“Many think the problem is just a bunch of people in power that are corrupt, and removing them would remove the problem.”
But Stone said that is far from the case, and such thoughts had given rise to a misperception of the task of anti-corruption agencies.
“That is not how corruption works. Corruption is in the system. It doesn’t enter with a bad person. It’s in the nature of big power and big money. Power doesn’t invite corruption to sneak in; it corrupts,” he said.
He said there was also a common misperception among citizens that only their country was dealing with such levels of corruption.
However, Stone said that every government that dealt with power and money would constantly deal with corruption, “but the task is constantly building integrity”.
Stone said that building systems of integrity and cultures of integrity was constant work for the leadership of every public institution. He advised that to see substantive change, leadership training and culture change needed to happen.
“Law enforcement is also crucial. The work of investigating and prosecuting state capture is difficult, yet essential. They must be well equipped, well trained, and effectively independent. That is hard to do.
“Even well equipped with the best, they cannot stop corruption on their own,” Stone said.
He echoed President Cyril Ramaphosa’s sentiments that success against corruption would need society, civic organisations, security agencies, and government buy-in.
“Success in fighting corruption comes from external bodies and internal leadership constantly working on building institutional systems of integrity.
“Good leadership alone can’t build strong systems of integrity. You need outside pressure as well, like investigative journalists and society,” Stone added.
