The year ends, but the accountability work does not.

Dear OUTA Supporters,

As we head into December and the annual break looms large for a country that is desperate for improved service delivery and governance, I’m reminded of a simple truth. South Africa never slows down, even when the calendar does. The past few weeks have shown this clearly. Oversight bodies have dug deeper. Commissions are laying bare the rot that has permeated our criminal justice systems. Sadly however, Government departments have stumbled through repeated failures that we’ve exposed and warned about for years. And through it all, the public kept asking the same question: when does accountability start to bite? When does meaningful consequence management begin?

Johannesburg’s sudden facelift ahead of the G20 summed it up perfectly. Clean verges. Painted lines. Traffic lights working for a change. Parts of the city looked like the place we know it can be. But turn two blocks away from the G20 routes, and you’re back to the reality that residents face every day. South Africans deserve consistency, not a performance for international guests.

This month’s hearings at the Madlanga Commission and Parliament’s ad hoc committee hammered home how much has been broken inside SAPS, crime intelligence and procurement structures. Testimonies contradicted themselves. Key officials were found wanting and couldn’t explain basic decisions. Most concerning is that whistleblowers continue risking their lives to bring the truth to light. Until these systems are rebuilt from the inside, a sustainable fight against corruption, will be near impossible. It is this change that we must all demand, during and following these hearings. 

While OUTA’s work continues to cut across many departments, higher education has attracted significant attention from OUTA in 2025, largely because of the ongoing extent of the rot, combined with significant information and insights pertaining to malfeasance and maladministration that we receive from within. To put it bluntly, the higher education environment is nothing short of a plundering crisis that continues to rob our youth of meaningful development and job opportunities.

Instead of using a rare five-year reset to replace weak SETA leadership and a crisis in governance oversight, we watched our new Minister of Higher Education - Buti Manamela - reinstate SETA CEOs and boards who displayed repeated audit and performance failures. NSFAS also lost a chairperson in Dr Karen Stander, who was actively engaged in cleaning house. It is our view that the higher education sector slid significantly backwards at the exact moment it could have turned a corner. We will challenge these decisions, because our higher education entities of NSFAS, the National Skills Fund (NSF) and our SETAs, collectively spend around R80 billion per annum, of which billions is being wasted and stolen without consequences.

Amidst the day-to-day grind of tackling many incidents that hold us back as a nation, we must and do acknowledge and celebrate the bright spots. The Medium-Term Budget Policy Statement (MTBPS) gave us a taste of what is possible - when Treasury tasks its oversight departments and SARS to collect more and route out wasteful / meaningless projects. This in turn gave rise to more revenue and additional savings, negating their initial budget (just 8 months ago), which sought to increase VAT by 2%, in order to balance the books. In addition, we get a sense that global confidence in South Africa is shifting. We are now off the grey list and credit ratings agencies are approving of the positive dynamics underway. To top it all, we’re starting to see long-stalled state capture cases finally move into court, the most recent being Mosebenzi Zwane and Malusi Gigaba, two kingpins in Zuma’s State Capture agenda. While not enough arrests are being made, these are positive developments, fueled further by the removal of Adv Andrew Chauke from Gauteng’s NPA structures.

But none of this will stick if government cannot protect whistleblowers, rebuild policing capacity and close legal loopholes that shield unfit and corrupt public leaders. More importantly, we need to fight the growing scourge of organised crime, procurement manipulation and the syndicates that have infiltrated many of our state entities. This effort will take guts, resources and political will, which are ingredients that are sadly lacking in our current leadership.

2026 is around the corner and this is a local government election-year. If our reading of the political landscape is correct, we can expect significant shifts and new coalition dynamics in many of our municipalities and metros, setting the scene for national elections and even bigger change, further down the line.

As with most businesses and NGO’s that have ground their way through a challenging year, the team at OUTA will take a few weeks off over the year-end break, to regroup and prepare for our strategic review in early 2026. Armed with positive results from assessments conducted on our board performance along with internal evaluations of our ethics, risks and organisational culture, I have no doubt that our team will hit the ground running in 2026, with more cases on the roll, deeper investigations under way and a base of active individuals and business supporters, who refuse to stand by and watch our country be trashed by very small percentage of our population who abuse their power.

To all our supporters, we thank you for being part of our journey. Your support makes it possible for us to hold the line in a country where accountability is still the exception, not the norm.

Rest, recover and remain resilient and hopeful. Together, we can unlock the potential this country has for all its people and the world at large.

Wayne Duvenage

CEO, OUTA