How Much Money Does South Africa Lose to Corruption per Day? The DA Says R800 Million

The Democratic Alliance posted a claim on social media that alleged that South Africa loses R800 million per day as a result of corruption. The claim was made in support of the party's campaign to stop cadre deployment.

The Democratic Alliance has launched a campaign directly geared towards the African National Congress's policies called #OutlawCadreDeployment.

The DA is adamant about completely putting an end to cadre deployment and corruption and has even approached Parliament on the matter. The party has presented the End Cadre Deployment Bill, which calls for various amendments on who can occupy public office.

The official opposition party made a sweeping claim that the deployment of cadres in prominent government positions should come to an end because South Africa loses R800 million to corruption on a daily basis.

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The claim was made on the party's official Twitter page, which also alleged that the Gauteng government incurred R1.6 billion in unauthorised expenditure.

The DA gave no indication about where the figures came from and how it was able to determine that the country loses R800 million per day to corruption.

Does South Africa lose R800 million to corruption per day? We checked

In 2017, the Department of Economic Development issued a report that indicated that South Africa's GDP loses out on R27 billion per year due to corruption, according to BusinessTech.

When the numbers are crunched, it would mean that South Africa would lose at least R73 million per day to corruption, which is significantly less than the figure presented by the DA. However, that figure is old and no new data has been released to indicate if more or less money is being lost to corruption annually.

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In 2021, Unite 4 Mzansi, an initiative launched by the South African Institute of Chartered Accountants (Saica), issued a report stating that between 2014 and 2019, South Africa lost approximately R1.5 trillion to corruption. The report was based on a case study called State Capture 101, according to Fin24.

The report did not give a breakdown of how much money was being lost per year or per day, so it would be difficult to actually break down how much money was lost per year, or even per day, based on Unite 4 Mzansi's data.

Speaking to AfricaCheck, Professor Jannie Roussouw from the Wits Business School stated that he heard that corruption costs South Africa around R300 billion per year, but was unable to verify the figure and where it came from.

If the figure was correct, it would somewhat support the DA's claim that R800 million is lost daily due to corruption, as R800 million per day would equal R292 billion a year.

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The DA's claim does not seem to be supported by facts, and when asked about where the figure came from, AfricaCheck noted that the party had not responded to their question.

Experts such as Gareth Newham from the Institute for Security Studies and Moira Campbell from Corruption Watch have indicated that there is no way of actually telling how much money is lost due to corruption because the tracking mechanisms are not available.

“This is a question that has been posed to us for the entire 10 years of our existence, and is a question that no one organisation can answer satisfactorily, not even in government,” said Campbell.

In conclusion, without a verifiable source to confirm the DA's claim about how much is lost to corruption per day, the claim remains unproven until the party can state how the figure was calculated.

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No, 60% of Sassa R350 SRD applicants are not young people with tertiary qualifications

Briefly News previously reported that a panel discussion on eNCA called 'We the Nation' recently sparked a debate on social media.

The show focused on youth unemployment in South Africa, and one of the claims made on the show was that 60% of the Social Relief of Distress grant applicants are young people with tertiary qualifications.

A photo of the show was posted on social media, with many people talking about how bad these statistics are. Some people also wanted to know which degrees these graduates hold, as there was no breakdown of the statistics on the show.

Source: Briefly News