Durban — ActionSA is expected to lay bribery charges against Democratic Alliance officials on Wednesday.
That was according to ActionSA national chairperson Michael Beaumont, who said that the party would lay criminal charges of bribery against senior leaders of the DA, including its KwaZulu-Natal chairperson Dean Macpherson, “for attempting to bribe an ActionSA councillor from Newcastle”.
Beaumont said this comes after images surfaced of ActionSA ward councillor of Newcastle, Shandy Singh, meeting with DA leader John Steenhuisen, former chief of staff to Helen Zille, Ashor Sarupen, Macpherson and DA KZN leader Francois Rodgers.
“ActionSA has been reliably informed that this meeting was convened to offer Mr Singh inducements to leave ActionSA and fill the DA vacancy in the KwaZulu-Natal legislature arising from the resignation of its chief whip Zwakele Mncwango,” Beaumont said.
He said the Newcastle Local Municipality has recently been snatched from the ANC in the 2021 Local Government Elections and is now under a narrow coalition government led by the IFP. Any effort to induce a by-election in a ward won with 30% of the vote would likely be seized by the ANC and used as an effort to restore an ANC government to the municipality.
“We call upon the DA to place the residents of Newcastle ahead of any personal efforts to settle political scores with ActionSA. As an organisation that purports to be principled and committed to the rule of law, it is inconceivable that financial inducements would be used to bribe public representatives,” Beaumont said.
Meanwhile, last month, the sixth edition of the Corruption Watch Analysis of Corruption Trends report and podcast unpacked the many ways in which corruption undermines and erodes fundamental human rights.
Corruption Watch found that the 1 037 whistle-blower reports received between January and June 2022 highlight how public and private sector corruption persistently obstructs access to basic human rights.
It said that the most prevalent types of corruption that emerge across the board from this period are fraud, amounting to 35% of total reports, abuse of authority, including victimisation of whistle-blowers and maladministration, both at 17%, bribery and extortion (including sextortion) at 16%, and procurement irregularities which count for 15%.
Corruption Watch said that a breakdown of these figures by focus area reveals that the most common corruption types in the private sector are fraud (56%) and maladministration (25%), mostly compliance-related. Corruption trends in the public sector relate to abuse of authority, bribery and extortion, and procurement and employment irregularities.
Daily News