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Andrew Harding
Africa correspondent
South Africa's crippling corruption
Corruption and mismanagement of funds are a major problem in South Africa
It's the sort of scandal that should bring down governments, and leave a nation's collective chin dragging on the floor in shock.
And yet this week's announcement that 30bn rand ($3.8bn; £2.4bn) goes missing each year from the South African government's procurement budget, has been greeted with little more than a shrug here. What does that say about this country?
Mercifully, the money - up to 20% of the budget - is not all stolen.
Some goes missing because of incompetence and negligence in the public service.
But the man who unveiled the figures - the head of the Special Investigating Unit, Willie Hofmeyr - pointed out that it was South Africa's poorest communities that were suffering disproportionately because of corruption and a lack of service delivery.
Between April and June this year alone, Mr Hofmeyr's investigators have confirmed "irregularities" of 1.4bn rand ($180m; £112m).
The good news - well, the slightly less discouraging news - is that some of the culprits are being caught. But Mr Hofmeyr says his unit needs 10 times more anti-corruption police to make a real difference.
South Africa's government is routinely chastised for producing world class planning documents and ambitious schemes. Then doing nothing with them.
"[Our] laws, regulations and policies are pretty good. But if there are no consequences to them being broken, if there are not enough people to investigate an allegation that rules have been broken, and to hold somebody to account, then the culture of impunity spreads quickly," Mr Hofmeyr said.
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Comment number 14.
this_comment_was_banned17th October 2011 - 0:29
This is the BBC so we can't say very much...
perhaps in another 50 years the BBC might, just might let us say more on thorny topics, after all they pay US .... oh no they don't WE pay THEIR wages ....
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Comment number 13.
nottsman16th October 2011 - 22:39
No surprises here....its just european civil servants and MP,s are more sav vy about hiding thier curruption ..they bring in laws to legalise theft from the people.
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Comment number 12.
justasheep16th October 2011 - 15:25
And as for the "booming" nature of this economy. Well, it would boom a lot more if the money allocated towards development actually got to the people who need it most, instead of becoming personal bribery slushfunds that can be dipped in to buy a deal or buy off a judge or the police when accused of a crime. That's reality in South Africa. No responsibility.
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Comment number 11.
justasheep16th October 2011 - 15:12
To the corruption apologists. You need to think ahead. If we cannot have a responsible government to set the standards of moral and ethical behaviour, then what lessons they teach the leaders of tomorrow, will only eventually backfire on the whole country eventually. You simply cannot continue robbing the cash cow and not think this is going to hurt in the end.
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Comment number 10.
jbhughes16th October 2011 - 14:33
It could be worse. In most African countries - Nigeria, Kenya, Angola, to name a few - the officialssteal literally every penny. In SA, they steal only a percentage. The country's survival depends on keeping this percentage to a manageable minimum.
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Comments 5 of 14