Mission

Combat municipal and procurement corruption in South Africa

Goals

The overall project goal is to use strategic levers of ethical change to combat municipal and procurement corruption in South Africa. Specifically, the project's objectives are to:

• Establish a national code of ethical governance for municipalities offering pragmatic guidance to navigate the ethical complexities confronting political and administrative leaders within municipalities

• Mainstream structured anti-corruption training and accreditation for suppliers, in the form of the Ethically Aware Supplier Induction (EASI) programme, leading to fewer ethical transgressions, and higher levels of reporting of misconduct by suppliers

• Build capacity in the Gauteng Provincial Government to support municipalities in sustainably institutionalising their ethics management programmes and improving their ethical culture

Stakeholders

The project was led by The Ethics Institute.

Activities

Through the project the Local Government Ethical Leadership Initiative (LGELI) was formally launched by the Minister for Cooperative Governance in 2022.

The initiative developed a Code for Ethical Leadership in Local Government through a consultative process involving nearly 700 stakeholders in 9 provinces, facilitating a national discourse on ethical challenges in local government and placing possible solutions firmly on the agenda.

The Ethically Aware Supplier Induction (EASI) programme raised awareness of ethical standards in business among hundreds of SMEs.

The initiative's Monitoring and Reporting Tool led to standardised anti-corruption reporting requirements for all Gauteng Municipalities and significantly increased transparency in investigations.

The Gauteng Municipal Integrity Programme provided continuous support to build the capacity Gauteng Provincial Government’s municipal
Ethics Relationship Managers, with 12 online
capacitation sessions held

At least 5 Ethics Relationship Managers are
independently supporting municipalities
with ethics management

An Ethics Officer Certification Programme
was held with 20 participants, both from the
provincial government and municipalities

18 support meetings were held with Gauteng
municipalities and Ethics Relationship Man-
agers

A draft Ethics Management Monitoring and
Reporting Tool was developed after individ-
ual consultation sessions with 6 municipali-
ties

KEY ACTIVITIES
(OCTOBER 2019 – SEPTEMBER 2020):

• The Local Government Ethical Leadership Ini- tiative has kicked off with the purpose of developing and institutionalizing a Code for Ethical Governance in Local Government over the next 5 years
• The technical Working Group was formed with members from the relevant government and civil society organizations on-board, and the Advisory Committee is on the verge of being established
• The Ethically Aware Supplier Induction pro- gramme was launched at an Ethics in the Supply Chain webinar on July 25, 2020 where it was promoted to more than 80 business representatives
• Under the funding of this project, 97 partici- Impact
  pants were given access to the programme. Of these, 79 were from SMEs and 18 were from large organizations
• In the Gauteng Province collaboration was formalized for capacitating the Gauteng Pro- vincial Government to assist the Gauteng municipalities with improving their ethics management capacity
• In 12 virtual capacity building sessions much progress has been made to capacitate the 17 provincial relationship managers
• Together with these relationship managers, 26 virtual meetings were held with the municipalities, cementing relationships between the province and the municipalities, and progressing the implementation of the ethics and anti-corruption strategies of the municipalities
• Two learning forums were held on Ethics in Municipal Procurement and Ethics in the Municipal Appointment Process