Madam Deputy Speaker, hon members, we need to be clear on what we are speaking about. Public officials, like MPs, own property, they have retirement funds, they have pensions, and they own shares through those pension funds. Those are legitimate private interests, and we are not talking about those. We are concerned with public servants who own and operate businesses which do business with government. That is the issue, and that is the concern when it comes to the conflict of interest.
Madam Deputy Speaker, perhaps in an ideal world the political, business and government sectors would all exist in neat little compartments but, of course, they don't. Despite our official policy of cadre deployment, South Africa still has a form of government and a political culture which has more in common with the Commonwealth than with the American model.
We continue to believe in the ideal of a Public Service which is impartial and apolitical. Once appointed to a senior management position, we South Africans honestly believe that public servants will operate in the best interests of all citizens and will make decisions impartially and without fear or favour. It is a sign of our continued optimism that even when this manifestly is not the case, we can still be disappointed.
The Public Service Commission report reveals that many public servants have either deliberately or negligently avoided making full declaration of their personal and business interests. Some are even serial offenders who have repeatedly refrained from making such disclosure. The Public Service Commission report indicates that there are grey areas in our code of conduct for public servants, concerning the precise definition of what constitutes remunerative work.
The sheer size of some of the contracts awarded to companies linked to officials who have not disclosed their interests demands that current policy and procedures be thoroughly reviewed. At the very least, nondisclosure must in future have serious disciplinary consequences for the officials concerned.
I'd like to suggest some examples from elsewhere in the Commonwealth that we could consider, for example, the use of inside information or insider trading, to use the commercial parlance, which is now regulated in the Australian code of conduct. Both Australia and Canada have created positions for ethics or integrity commissioners, especially to enforce compliance with their codes of conduct. Canada makes blind trusts obligatory for public service office holders, while the 2007 code of conduct for New Zealand public servants allows state departments to prohibit certain types of financial interests as a condition of employment by that department.
We, in Parliament, need to do more to ensure that the national and provincial Ministers and MECs do what is required of them, which is simply to hold their senior officials accountable. We need to take seriously the problems uncovered by the Public Service Commission and the Auditor-General and move swiftly to improve the way the risks of conflicts of interests are managed, are reported on and are, above all, complied with by all public officials at all levels of government. Madam Deputy Speaker, thank you.