Rethabile Pitso
THE Speaker of the National Assembly, Tlohang Sekhamane, has challenged Public Accounts Committees (PACs) across the Southern African region to confront corruption and maladministration head-on, warning that Africa’s development will remain stunted unless leaders act decisively against impunity.
Delivering his keynote address at the Southern African Development Community Organisation of Public Accounts Committees (SADCOPAC) conference in Maseru this week, Mr Sekhamane said corruption had become endemic, crippling African economies.
“The growing statistics on corruption should be taken seriously because they reflect the true extent of our problem,” Mr Sekhamane said.
“Who is creating corruption? It is people in power! Why are they not in prison? Why do our courts punish only ordinary citizens for minor offences while those stealing millions from public coffers walk free? Where are our Public Accounts Committees?”
He called on PACs to be fearless in uprooting the vices of maladministration, corruption, and impunity, which he described as Africa’s biggest obstacles to progress.
“Maladministration is the inefficient or dishonest management of public affairs, where service delivery is the victim bleeding to death in the ICU. Impunity is when there is no accountability or rule of law — when people don’t face the consequences of their actions. These three maladies are what we must collectively fight.”
Mr Sekhamane lamented Africa’s perennial poor performance on global indices despite its vast natural resources.
“Africa, a continent endowed with abundant natural wealth, remains at the bottom in nearly all global indicators — per capita GDP, poverty, unemployment, crime, life expectancy, and governance. We cannot dismiss this reality,” he said.
He dismissed what he called “cheap superficial conspiracy theories” claiming global indicators were biased against Africa.
“If these global indices are biased, then let us create our own that will prove Africa is thriving. But until then, we must face our painful truth and devise credible, brave solutions.”
Regional challenges
In a joint statement following deliberations, SADCOPAC Secretary General Dithapelo Keorapetse and Deputy Secretary General ‘Machabana Lemphane Letsie — who also chairs Lesotho’s PAC — said the conference had reached collective resolutions aimed at strengthening accountability and oversight within member states.
They said PACs across the region face similar challenges, including the lack of enforceable policies compelling institutions to act on PAC recommendations, weak cooperation with Supreme Auditing Institutions (SAIs), and limited use of technology to enhance oversight.
Ms Lemphane-Letsie shared Lesotho’s experience, highlighting the PAC’s collaboration with law enforcement during hearings.
“When we hold PAC sessions, we invite the Directorate on Corruption and Economic Offences and the Fraud Department of the Lesotho Mounted Police Service. This ensures that issues of a criminal nature arising from PAC hearings are immediately pursued by investigators,” Ms Lemphane-Letsie explained.
She also underscored the need for continuous capacity building to enable parliamentarians to interpret complex audit reports.
“We are politicians with diverse backgrounds, so understanding technical audit information is not always easy. SADCOPAC provides for training after every election, but frequent changes in parliaments make continuity difficult,” she said.
According to Ms Lemphane-Letsie, the week’s commission findings revealed that public procurement remains the region’s most corruption-prone sector.
“Public procurement is a high-risk area for fraud, financial loss, and irregular practices such as overpricing, mis-procurement, and partisan awarding of tenders. Countries are losing vast resources to illegally procured services,” she warned, urging the adoption of electronic procurement systems to reduce risks.
She further called for stronger collaboration between PACs and other oversight portfolios to improve financial governance and debt management, citing Lesotho’s Frazer Solar debacle as an example of the costly consequences of poor financial interpretation.
Call for action
Opening the conference earlier in the week, Chair of Chairs, Mokhothu Makhalanyane, echoed the call for stronger anti-corruption efforts, lamenting the devastating impact of maladministration on essential services.
“We cannot discuss sustainable development without confronting the cancer of corruption. The African Union estimates that Africa loses over M2.5 trillion (US$148 billion) every year to corruption— more than it receives in aid.”
He said the effects of corruption were evident across SADC in collapsed infrastructure, unpaid civil servants, ghost projects and ballooning debt.
“In Lesotho, maladministration has deprived our people of access to clean water, a resource we have in abundance. When you think of Lesotho, you think of water — yet our people are being robbed of it,” Mr Makhalanyane said.
He called on PACs to intensify their oversight role and ensure that public resources are used for their intended purpose.
“Corruption is not just a governance issue — it is a direct attack on our people’s dignity and wellbeing,” he said.
