Apartheid Grand Corruption Report, Hennie van Vuuren

This report attempts to document and describe instances of corruption that we know took place during apartheid and in particular, during the period 1976–1994. Through documented evidence and testimonies of those who have information about this period it attempts to highlight on some well-known corruption cases. However, the report is equally concerned with that about which little is known: the questions that are asked throughout are those that have either not been answered, or not fully explored, by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) or any other organ of the democratically elected government. Importantly, the report is not intended to be an exhaustive expose of corruption under apartheid. In highlighting examples it does not mean that these are necessarily the only examples of apartheid-era corruption. The report does not attempt to make judgement on all the cases presented and has been limited in the extent of its enquiry by the amount of material available on the subject. It is worth noting that additional research is required to build a body of knowledge (which does not exist to any significant degree at present) of the types of governance failures that occurred during apartheid. This, together with limited human resources available in undertaking research for this report should also contextualise the reliance on newspaper clippings and single source interviews.

The report begs the question: why has there been no successful dedicated prosecution of crimes of corruption involving the apartheid era elite? Is it due to a lack of evidence? Is this, in turn, due to a lack of capacity? Does it reflect part of a broader political agreement as part of the sunset clause? This report does not attempt to provide answers to these difficult questions but rather attempts to lay the groundwork for probity by others.

The report also attempts to help explain, from a governance perspective, the extent to which the apartheid state was not only criminal in terms of international law by the early 1990s, but had been criminalised in itself (see Stephen Ellis’s excellent description of criminalisation of the state in Africa11). The legacy of such a corrupt system did not disappear into the night in 1994, when the white flag was lowered and a new South African banner hoisted. Rather, it had entrenched itself to such an extent that it would inevitably serve to corrupt the new order.