Dube Tshidi & The FSCA – Captured Regulator? Open Secrets: Unaccountable In Part 2, we profiled the conduct of the Liberty Group in the incorrect cancellation of hundreds of pension funds when they still held more than R100m owed to thousands of people. This is part of a far bigger scandal of unpaid pensions due to more than four million southern Africans. This week we look at Dube Tshidi, a regulator who not only effected the erroneous cancellations, but also failed to hold Liberty or any implicated financial sector actors to account. When the public needed effective regulation, the Financial Services Board (FSB) and its long-standing head failed them.
Liberty – Profit Over Pensioners Open Secrets: Unaccountable More than 16 million South Africans contribute to a pension fund, most of which are run by financial behemoths like Liberty. They do so in the hope of a decent dignified life in retirement, and to ensure their dependants will be paid if they die. While the South African public is castigated for not saving enough for retirement, the pension fund industry is largely silent when it comes to the over R40bn in ‘unpaid benefits’ owed to over 4 million people. Is this because fund administrators and asset managers profit from this money?
November 2019 Household Affordability Index We are close to marking one year since the introduction of the National Minimum Wage. The value at which the NMW is set will be reviewed.
Dame Margaret Hodge MP – A Very British Apartheid Profiteer Open Secrets: Unaccountable Margaret Hodge has clothed herself in the claim that she has dedicated her life to fighting racism – that her very ‘being’ was anti-racist, as she said in March 2019. The facts suggest otherwise.
October 2019 Household Affordability Index Food prices continue to rise. The trajectory is an upward trend. October 2019 sees a third consecutive month of increases in the cost of the household food basket which may continue to rise into the new year.
September 2019 Household Affordability Index Partner Publication The Household Affordability Index for September 2019 has been published.
Robert Gabriel Mugabe: A Lesson of Hope and Despair in Zimbabwe Opinion Robert Mugabe, the prime minister and president of Zimbabwe from independence in 1980 until 2017, when he was overthrown in a coup, has passed away at the age of 95. To speak the name “Mugabe” invokes charged political debates characterised by a range of conflicting tensions: hope and despair, demonisation and adulation, contempt and respect, dissent and loyalty. Sometimes these attitudes are interchangeable and overlapping, sometimes they express more fixed polarities. These divisions draw from the violence, fissures and closures that have given rise to Zimbabwe’s post-colonial political spectrum and left painful traces in the political imaginary of Zimbabwean people. By Brian Raftopoulos
Could a Different Version of State Capture Be a Good Idea in South Africa? Analysis In 2016, various allegations were made by opposition politicians and the media of a close and corrupt relationship between then President Jacob Zuma and the Gupta family from India (several of whom had had their applications to become South African citizens fast-tracked). By Tracy Ledger
State Capture: On Kenya’s Inability to Fight Corruption Interview Since the launch of Transparency International (TI)’s Corruption Perceptions Index in 1995, Kenya has invariably foundered in the bottom third of the countries surveyed. TI-Kenya’s Bribery Index reports widespread bribery; some institutions, including the police, land registries and county licensing services are notoriously predatory. By Gladwell Otieno
Presidential Families & Co. in Senegal: A State of Capture in the Making? Interview Senegal is often referred to as an example of democracy in Africa. The country holds regular free and fair elections, has a vibrant civil society and a population protective of its democratic achievements. On the back of numerous anti-corruption efforts, Senegal fares comparatively well in Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index (67/180). However, according to a study by the Senegalese National Office to Fight Fraud and Corruption, 95.3 percent of the general public and 61.7 percent of professionals attest to the presence of corruption in their immediate environment. Although the country has had its fair share of grand corruption scandals, the term “state capture” has not yet found its way into the Senegalese vocabulary. By El Hadji Malick Sy Camara
