Issued by Daniela Ellerbeck on behalf of the FW de Klerk Foundation on 17/11/2025

The FW de Klerk Foundation has submitted formal comments on the Special Investigating Unit’s (“SIU”) Draft National Corruption Risk and Prevention Framework. The submission highlights the unconstitutionality of South Africa’s current corruption framework and calls for urgent reforms.

“Despite a Constitutional Court ruling fourteen years ago that the State must establish a sufficiently independent anti-corruption body, no such body exists,” states Daniela Ellerbeck, an attorney and the Manager of the FW de Klerk Foundation’s Constitutional Rights Programme. “Indeed, the Justice Department recently told Parliament it has not yet even started drafting a law to create this body. The Foundation believes this delay is unreasonable and infringes multiple constitutional rights.”

“South Africa’s constitutional democracy is under siege by the persistent and systemic scourge of corruption,” says Christo van der Rheede, the Foundation’s Executive Director. “Corruption erodes the foundations of our constitutional democracy – accountability, responsiveness and openness – and the public’s trust in the State and its institutions,” concludes Van der Rheede.

Building on this, Ellerbeck emphasised that the current anti-corruption bodies do not meet the Constitutional Court’s standard of independence, because they are not outside of the executive’s control. “This is not just a policy failure, it is unconstitutional,” states Ellerbeck.

The Foundation’s submission calls on Parliament to urgently create the anti-corruption body mandated by the Court. It also urged the SIU to consider creating an online public platform to track corruption cases, procurement processes and the recovery of stolen funds in real time – empowering citizens and restoring accountability.