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There are existing rules in South Africa, such as the Public Administration Management Act, that restrict public servants from doing business with the state to prevent conflicts of interest.
“So I believe it is the Public Administration Management Act that introduces this restriction which effectively says that public servants of the public sector is not allowed to do business with the state.”
To verify conflicts of interest, a main method is to check whether a public servant owns a company that receives government contracts via the central supplier's database.
“The main way for verifying that there is no conflict is to determine whether that company is on the central supplier's database. So these are companies that get government procurements, that tender for procurements.”
Many public servants have a relatively straightforward profile of assets and income to declare, typically limited to two or three categories such as house, car, and bank account.
“80% of your public servants will probably only have to declare two or three categories of information . It would be your house , it would be your car , maybe your bank account”
It is important to have comprehensive disclosure forms to detect people engaging in unlawful income and hiding it.
“It is important to have the complicated or the comprehensive form because you need to have enough information to catch people who are essentially making unlawful income and hiding it .”
Most public servants have lawful but onerous asset disclosure obligations, manageable in a digitized e-disclosure system that imports previous submissions to reduce workload.
“There may be one or two , or there may be a limited class of people who have behaved perfectly legally but nevertheless find it a bit onerous to disclose all of their assets for reasons unrelated to corrupt income . But with a e - disclosure system , that is a once - off onerous , for the most part , that is a once - off onerous process . You will just import everything thereafter and it is only if there are dramatic movements in your assets and income that you need to disclose that it is going to be an ongoing problem and those cases are going to be few and far between .”