Retired Constitutional Court justice Mbuyiseli Madlanga has put a price on corruption: it will only be deterred when it becomes both dangerous and financially worthless. Speaking at the Oliver Tambo Memorial Lecture in Johannesburg on Friday, he pressed courts and the wider anti-corruption apparatus to sharpen their work, with the central aim of cutting off or shrinking the profits that draw people into corrupt deals.
His economic logic was blunt. Corruption, he noted, is never a state affair alone: it requires people inside public office and people outside it to strike corrupt relationships. That reality means private individuals and companies are not bystanders but enablers and beneficiaries, and he challenged the habit of directing scrutiny at government while leaving the private side of the bargain unexamined. Honest businesses face their own financial peril, he added, risking ruin or being pushed toward participation in corrupt practices simply to survive. Reducing the returns on corruption is, in his framing, the most effective way to discourage it.
Madlanga, who chairs the commission probing alleged criminality, political interference and corruption in the criminal justice system, framed these failures as betrayals of Tambo’s legacy, placing them alongside the persistent violence against women in the country.
What diverted money actually costs came next. When funds meant for public purposes are siphoned off, the state’s capacity to meet its obligations weakens, and poor and vulnerable South Africans are left most exposed. “Public resources are not there for one to amass personal wealth and public power is not to be abused for personal gain or private purposes,” he said. He drew a firm line between access to public resources and personal entitlement, describing office-holders as custodians of institutions and resources that belong to South Africans, who must preserve and strengthen them for future generations. Treating public office as private property, he cautioned, could erode the democratic legitimacy of the state by suggesting it belongs to whoever controls access to its resources. “We must preserve the boundary between the person and the office. After all, a person’s incumbency is fleeting, but the office must endure.”
Tambo served as his measure of custodial conduct. Madlanga described a man who gave up a flourishing legal practice and his chosen life in South Africa to build the ANC’s external mission. Across three decades in exile, Tambo secured international relationships, money and other support for the liberation struggle, his integrity tested by access to resources that could have financed personal comfort at a time when external oversight was limited. He understood, Madlanga said, that custodianship was not ownership.
Meanwhile, the inheritance to be protected extended to women’s freedom and safety. Gender-based violence and femicide, he argued, undermine constitutional guarantees of dignity, equality and freedom from violence, contradicting the non-sexist South Africa Tambo fought for. In the discussion that followed the lecture, he criticised how the justice system treats women, noting that court processes can compound their suffering by forcing them to relive violations and endure further indignity. Courts must be sensitive to women’s rights, he said, with responsibility resting on judicial officers and on the institutions investigating and prosecuting such violence. He also called out ordinary people who hear neighbours being assaulted, see the evidence of injuries and decide it is none of their business, insisting they have a responsibility to act.
Madlanga acknowledged what has been achieved since 1994, explicitly rejecting any claim that nothing positive has been delivered, but said those gains do not absolve the country of unfulfilled constitutional obligations. His appeal for participation extended to the defence of democracy itself: citizens can hold officeholders accountable through elections, lawful protest, questions, litigation and other constitutional mechanisms. He recognised the discouragement bred by corruption, weakened state enterprises and institutional paralysis, but warned that withdrawing from democratic life would only strengthen those abusing public power. “We cannot give up on our constitutional inheritance, for that will be surrendering to those who use state resources and institutions as their own.”