Swaziland / eSwatini continues to be riddled with
corruption, according to the latest annual report from Transparency
International.
The kingdom ruled by King Mswati III as sub-Saharan
Africa’s last absolute monarch scored 38 out of a possible 100 in the Corruption Perceptions Index for
2018. In 2017 it scored 37 on a scale where zero is ‘highly corrupt’ and
100 is ‘very clean’. The index ranks countries by their perceived levels
of public sector corruption according to experts and businesspeople.
Transparency International did not publish details of
the corruption in Swaziland, but it is already widely known. In November 2018 national
police Deputy Commissioner Mumcy Dlamini told an event for International Fraud
Awareness Week Swaziland
lost E30 million from the economy because of banking fraud alone during the
previous year.
In an annual
report ending March 2017, Acting Auditor General Muziwandile Dlamini said government
financial accounts were incomplete, billions of emalangeni were unaccounted
for and laid-down rules, guidelines and procedures were ignored. The offices of
the Prime Minister, National Commissioner of Police, Defence Department and
Correctional Services were among a string of government departments and
agencies that broke the law by spending tens of
millions of emalangeni on vehicles and transport running costs without
authority.
In December 2017, Swaziland’s Anti-Corruption Commission issued a report suggesting that 79
percent of 3,090 people interviewed in a survey believed that corruption within
government was ‘rife’.
The survey suggested that corruption was perceived to take place mostly
in rural councils. The perceived major causes of corruption were poverty (58
percent), unemployment (54 percent) and greed (41 percent). The survey was
conducted by the Swazi Ministry of Justice and Constitutional Affairs through
the ACC.
In June 2017, the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa (OSISA) reported
the kingdom, was riddled with corruption in both private and public places.
It said, ‘The results of grand corruption are there for all to see in
the ever increasing wealth of high-level civil servants and officers of
state.’
It added, ‘For a long time the police, the Ministry of Finance, the
Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Trade as well as the Department of Customs
and Excise have often been implicated in corrupt practices.’
It gave many examples including the case of the government propaganda
organisation Swaziland Broadcasting and Information Service (SBIS) where E 1.6
million was
paid to service providers for the maintenance of a machine that was neither
broken nor in use. The officer who
authorised the bogus job cards has since been promoted and transferred to
another government department.
The report called The effectiveness of anti-corruption agencies in Southern
Africa stated, ‘This type of behaviour is common
albeit covert and therefore difficult to monitor as goods and services are
undersupplied or rerouted for personal use. The results of grand corruption are
there for all to see in the ever increasing wealth of high-level civil servants
and officers of state.’
See also
Corruption rife among security firms servicing Swaziland
Government and public enterprises
Swaziland
‘riddled with corruption’
‘Army
among most corrupt in world’
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