SOUTH AFRICA: Anti-graft efforts face ‘dangerous fightback’

South African Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan said on Sunday that efforts to clean up corruption in state-owned companies (SOCs) faced “dangerous” resistance which threatened the country’s sovereignty. Gordhan, a former finance minister, has been tasked by President Cyril Ramaphosa with cleaning up SOCs such as power utility Eskom, which suffered misgovernance under former president […]

South African Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan said on Sunday that efforts to clean up corruption in state-owned companies (SOCs) faced “dangerous” resistance which threatened the country’s sovereignty.
Gordhan, a former finance minister, has been tasked by President Cyril Ramaphosa with cleaning up SOCs such as power utility Eskom, which suffered misgovernance under former president Jacob Zuma.
In an opinion piece in the Sunday Times newspaper, Gordhan said that new boards had started to address “the depth of corruption and criminal behavior that seems to have become endemic in these institutions.”
“But the dangerous and unscrupulous fightback against our reform efforts continues. If we allow this fightback to prevail, we risk losing our sovereignty,” he said, without naming who was behind the backlash.