Higher education’s critical role in building a society and public sector resilient to corruption

The Wits School of Governance hosted a workshop on promoting international anti-corruption standards in academia on 11 June 2025, the third and last in a series by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OCED) – Siemens Integrity project.

The panel discussions revealed how conversations within South Africa have evolved since the first workshop in early 2022. Building from the National Anti-Corruption Strategy (2020–2030), there is a growing awareness of the role of higher education. From attention to discipline specific skills development and ethical decision-making in the professionalisation of the public sector, to the emphasis on the ‘whole of society’ approach that calls for empowered citizens and shifts in national consciousness, higher education has a central role to play.

These crucial dialogues posits that public higher education institutions have, at their core, a responsibility to create public value; with this mandate in mind, it is crucial to critically engage with the complex task of educating for an ethical society.

WSG’s Associate Professor Christine Hobden began the engagement at the Parktown Management Campus with a reflection with previous hosts and participants, Dr Carlos Conde (OECD), Prof Natasja Holzhausen (University of Pretoria) and Dr Marianne Camerer (University of Cape Town). A number of new initiatives were highlighted within their institutions, and the emerging Public Ethics Network of South Africa - convened by Hobden -  was raised as an example of new forms of collaboration around the research and teaching of public ethics.

Some key ideas included the importance of the internal governance of the university as the foundation of being able to teach best practice, the role of peer engagements for context-informed learning, and the need to develop a shared language of public ethics across disciplines and within society.  It also emerged that universities need both to ‘give courage a face’ in bringing whistleblowers stories to the classroom, and, in balance, equip students to commit to ethical decision-making in their daily lives, not as the exceptional and heroic, but as the ordinary.

The second part of the panel included contributions from Professor Firoz Cachalia (Wits and Chair of the National Anti-Corruption Advisory Council), Ms Fatima Rawat (The Ethics Institute) and Professor Robert Barrington (Centre for the Study of Corruption, University of Sussex) with key insights including further emphasis on the need for a focused and strategic approach to anti-corruption and public ethics education and the important balance between teaching theory to be used as a tool of analysis and deeper understanding, and ensuring practical, applicable learning through case studies and experiential learning.

The invitation was to think through educational initiatives that engage critically with the identification of problems and build capacity to respond to these problems. Similarly, the question and answer session drew attention to the importance of supporting public servants to be ethical within their specific context, a context which is often fraught with complex ethical issues and fear.

The need to be proactive and agile was centred in the discussion, leading to suggestions of short courses, executive education, and collaboration across disciplines and institutions. The emphasis on peer-learning and the importance of context highlighted the need for in-person learning and cohort building to play a foundational role in ethics and anti-corruption education.