Children go hungry when corruption goes unpunished
Government could all but eradicate child malnutrition and stunting with the money the country loses to corruption.
While over a quarter of South African children grow up stunted, a handful of individuals are gorging on the proceeds of ill-gotten gains, sabotaging potential growth and prosperity
Consider this: it costs about R940 a month to feed a child a nutritious diet – about R11 280 a year.
That means Government could have fed 46 000 of the country’s malnourished children nutritious meals for the entire year with just the money in spends bailing under-performing state-owned enterprises (R520,6-million a year, according to Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana).
Now consider this: it costs around R3 699 a month for a basket of basic foodstuffs to feed a household of four. It means Government could feed 44 388 families all year with the money reportedly lost to corruption every year (R27 billion – R52 billion is the most frequently used range).
Of course, nobody knows the true cost of corruption – it is almost certainly substantially more than R27-billion – but its impact goes way beyond rands and cents.
Whether in government or boardrooms, corrupt individuals and schemes undermine the fabric of our economy and broader society, causing immeasurable harm way beyond damage to the national fiscus.
Investor confidence suffers, entrepreneurial spirit falters, and economic opportunities wither in a society unable to rely on efficient criminal justice. A one percent deviation in the growth rate equates to a 0,6% deviation in employment, according to an IMF assessment. That’s a swing of 63 840 jobs.
One doesn’t need to be a mathematician to know that this equates to an enormous amount of meals.
Corruption exacts a terrible invisible toll that is all the more demoralising because it is largely avoidable. Unlike other economic shocks and knocks, corporate and public service malfeasance is self-inflicted pain within our power to eradicate. And yet, as security expert Dr Jean Redpath observes, the country has no dedicated anti-corruption agency.
The Directorate of Priority Crime Investigations, which took over from the Scorpions, has neither the manpower nor the budget to confront corruption, Redpath said in an opinion piece published this week.
This is particularly concerning in light of the scale and severity of state capture, corruption, and fraud detailed in the Zondo Commission final report.
To conclude, some more numbers: the DG Murray Trust estimates that between 27-29% of South African children under the age of five are stunted due largely to malnutrition (read more HERE). Research shows that 14% of babies are born underweight.
To respond to this crisis of poverty and hunger, social justice groups have proposed a range of possible interventions to deal with this crisis of poverty and hunger.
These include:
- increase the child support grant
- introduce a maternal support grant
- partially subsidising the cost of various high-protein low-cost food
Introducing these measures, along with others specifically targeted at undernourished children, would cost the state about R52-R53 billion a year – coincidentally the same as the annual corruption cost according to some estimates.
In other words, the money lost to corruption could fund all major child nutrition interventions.
One would like to think at least some of these figures may weigh on Cabinet’s conscience, if not their calculations, when it considers the recommendations of the National Anti-Corruption Advisory Council when has just handed in its final report.
The NACAC recommends a permanent, independent, overarching anti-corruption body “to both fight corruption and prevent it from happening in the first place,” President Ramaphosa said this week in his regular newsletter update.
The sooner we clamp down on corruption, the sooner we can give vulnerable children the opportunity they deserve.
John Lawson
CEO of the Cape Chamber of Commerce and Industry