There is no question that South Africa is a mark for easy money dishonestly obtained, or with very little work or effort. One simply has to ask the infamous Gupta brothers how easy it was to capture the state and its SOEs, aided and abetted by government officials bent on lining their pockets.
There is another situation where government insidiously and wantonly wastes obscene sums of money with very little or no attention drawn to it. This involves consultancy firms retained by national and local government to provide so-called specialised services. It is legal, but in most cases morally indefensible, because such services, mostly fall into the category of routine in-house responsibilities.
Consultancy services are big business in South Africa - R25-billion spent in the 2015-16 financial year. The likes of Transnet, SABC, Eskom and SAA are addicted to global consultancy services. They fool themselves that such services will magically dig them out of self-created financial holes. If it was so, there would be no need for ongoing government guarantees to bail out SOE albatrosses metaphorically around the neck of South Africa's economy. Billions of rand redound to the benefit of consultants for so-called expertise for what is already patently known, except for dressed-up management consulting double speak.
A couple of journalists recently raised the question of hidden beneficiaries from the billions of rand flowing between global consultancy firms and SOEs. A bit of a stretch? Not very likely.
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