The effect of corruption on the 'available resources' for the right to housing as espoused by the Constitution of South Africa

Abstract

The objective of this study was to expose how the ineffectiveness of the anti-corruption measures contributed in delaying the right to housing, as proffered by the Constitution of South Africa, to the impoverished population at large. The result of this study has shown that the available resources of the state were not sufficiently protected against malfeasance in the public service. The plethora of anti-corruption measures has not deterred wayward public officials from personally abusing the 'available resources' earmarked for housing. Stark evidence of corruption was revealed by the SIU Reports (2011, 2012, and 2013) that confirmed endemic proportions of corruption in the public housing programme that had seen housing projects delayed, half-completed and not built. The point is, that the right to housing is not necessarily delayed by a lack of economic resources as often claimed by the government, but rather that those resources are available, but not amply protected against corruption by the anti-corruption measures and agencies in place, to do this. Procurement processes are undermined by public officials, including management, who by-pass laws that govern public finance. This behaviour has been pervasive in the human settlement programme since 2007 when the SIU embarked on its proclamation to investigate corruption in the social housing programme. Exacerbating the abuse of available resource is the first citizen, the President who the Constitutional Court found has unlawfully benefited from security upgrades at his private home, Nkandla. Thus the public service suffers from an acute lack of ethical behaviour and thereby good governance and this has made the government vulnerable to breaching international treaty obligations insofar as realisation of the minimum core in housing and protecting the maximum available resources for housing against malfeasance in government. Instead that government realises the right to housing for the impoverished soonest, the government was rather pre-occupied with abusing state funds earmarked as such and thereby deprived the right to enjoy access to housing, in particular to the homeless and the most desperate.