Former Corruption Watch executive director and member of the National Anti-Corruption Advisory Council David Lewis stressed on Thursday that while South Africa is in need of a new anti-corruption agency, it must not include law enforcement as he believes it will enormously restrict the public access to the agency.

One of Zondo Commission report recommendations is the establishment of a new anti-corruption agency.

Lewis was speaking during the State capture conference hosted by the Public Affairs Research Institute and the Council for the Advancement of the Constitution.

Lewis pointed out that the State’s agency that normally coordinates anti-corruption activities, the anti-corruption task team, is currently led by law enforcement.

He noted that the confidentiality requirements in law enforcement for agencies such as the Financial Intelligence Centre, the prosecutorial authority and the Hawks, are very strong and that the decision making process cannot be interfered with.

“If they are incorporated into the new Council, the Council will have to be effective, other anti-corruption activities will have to be subordinated to the law enforcement requirements for confidentiality. So public campaigns, media statements, all the staff that allows the public to develop a sense of confidence, sense of engagements with anti-corruption activities, will be changed because law enforcement requirements for confidentiality would have to be respected,” he explained.

Added to that, he noted that to set up a new chapter nine institution, it would require at least two constitutional amendments with an elaborate legislative structure and a statutory basis.

He said one of the reasons why the anti-corruption strategy has failed is because it has no form of statutory basis.

“I do not know if a chapter nine institution is necessary,” he stated.

He said a new agency should be involved in advocacy, research and public campaigns.

He suggested that it would be an interesting and important task for the agency to look at why the State agency has been a “total failure”. Lewis believes one of the reasons it has been unsuccessful is because it includes both law enforcement and non-law enforcement bodies.

He said while there were some good reasons for decentralisation, he believes it has become fragmented and impossible for National Treasury and other entities to exercise oversight.

He said one of the things that will need to be worked out in the new agency, if is to be established, is a clear outline of what will be centralised and what will be decentralised. Also needing clarification is the investigation of irregularities, corruption, mismanagement, which he said is part of a centralised function.

APPOINTMENT PROCESSES

Lewis made the point that a key element in the State capture project was the appointment process for boards and executives of State-owned entities, as well as the appointments of director generals of government departments such as mining, minerals and energy, which were of interest to Gupta targets.

He said the appointments were made in such a way to facilitate the State capture saga, and he thinks it will be a good idea to place appointments in the hands of a “blue ribbon panel” – a pool of people with unimpeachable integrity and some degree of human resource experience.

“Obviously from time to time if you are appointing somebody to do a contact to build a nuclear power station, you don’t appoint people who are experts in procuring stationary. So there have to be technical expertise on these committees as well,” he stressed.

He also suggested a high level government representative on each of panel as government was entitled to require that appointees generally support the strategies and approach of the government of the day.

He suggested that it was a bad idea for one body to appoint an employee who is accountable to another person, explaining that if the CFO of a State enterprise reports to the CEO, it should be the State enterprise that ma...