The apartheid government was not free of corruption.

The apartheid government was not free of
corruption, but it was hidden from the public eye, says a
report into grand corruption under the Nationalist Party
government.
"In closed societies, which are highly militarised under
dictatorial rule, the truth is hidden from public view by
design," report author Hennie van Vuuren of the Institute for
Security Studies said in the introduction.
The report was released on Monday in Johannesburg and the
103 page document gives a chilling insight into corruption and
corrupt officials under the former regime.
Van Vuuren said that the issue of grand corruption under
apartheid had not been publicly debated much.
"Since the advent of democratic rule, scant attention has been
paid to the possibility that leading apartheid-era functionaries
(in government and business) may have used the cover of
authoritarian rule to illegally acquire vast sums of wealth in
defiance even of the legal 'norms' of that time," Van Vuuren
wrote.
'Brutal, but honest'
He said public perception that the new democratic South
Africa was more corrupt than the old system dominated for a
couple of years after 1994.
This was also reinforced by the opinions of former leaders,
such as former president FW de Klerk.
This, Van Vuuren said, created a situation where the old
government was remembered as "brutal" in the way that it
governed, but "honest" in the way it managed its finances.
"In such a scenario the politics of apartheid is trivialised as
misguided idealism and the role of the business community in
such a system was primarily about legitimate shareholder
profit."
This, however, was not the case, according to the report.
The apartheid government was a corrupt system of
governance.
"A near monopoly on money, power and influence were in the
hands of a minority and they used this to either violently
suppress the majority or, at best, transfer resources in order to
stave off the inevitable revolution."
The report focused on instances of corruption that took place
between 1976 and 1994.
Sensitive issue
It relied on interviews with 20 people, including researchers,
journalists, liberation struggle activists, politicians from the
previous government, business people and security personnel.
Not all of them, Van Vuuren stated, were willing to be
identified.
"It is worth noting that a number of interviewees requested
that comments not be attributed to them... This reflects the
fact that the nature of this research is still considered sensitive
by many."
Information was also collected from various private and public
archival collections.
"It is worth noting that little exists in the way of official records
of corruption under apartheid.
"Many of the official records that were not destroyed prior to
1994 are either accommodated by disparate departments, the
national archive or are held in private collections by officials..."
SAPA



This is a News24 article posted in 2006