Towards specialized anti-corruption courts for South Africa: a delayed engagement

Abstract

Corruption destabilises the socio-economic factors and undermines the rule of law. Therefore, Specialised Anti-Corruption Courts aim to strengthen anti-corruption initiatives. Drawing from international and regional conventions, particularly the United Nations Convention Against Corruption, the African Union Convention on Preventing and Combatting Corruption and the Southern African Development Community Protocol against Corruption. The research will determine whether this Court would be a viable option for institutional reform within South Africa’s anti-corruption agencies. However, although a normative framework is established and legal obligation arises out of these various instruments, South Africa still fails to address conviction rates of high-profile cases, court backlogs and weak collaboration and coordination between anti-corruption agencies. As a result, the study will analyse and evaluate existing anti- corruption legislation, case law, and comparative experiences of SACC established in other states. Although states are not mandated to enact a SACC under international law, it may be argued that the SACC would provide judicial independence, specialised expertise and efficiently offer a plausible solution. Therefore, this study aims to create a comparative framework, which is constructed around four interrelated concepts, namely judicial independence, judicial expertise, institutional accountability and judicial efficiency. This comparative framework seeks to identify whether the SACC would assist South Africa in their efforts to combat the aforementioned concepts and to evaluate whether the SACC would be a viable option to combat and prevent corruption efficiently.