To get the oldest daughter of former President Josè Eduardo Dos Santos into the dock, Angolan authorities will have to extradite her from London.

Former President Josè Eduardo Dos Santos, dubbed by the watchdog group Transparency International as one of the most corrupt leaders on the planet, put his daughter in charge of Angola’s state-owned oil company Sonangol in 2016. 

She was sacked a year later by her father’s successor Joao Lourenco.

Thousands of  documents allegedly showing how she crookedly  accumulated more than two billion dollars of Angolan public money have been leaked to the media – spurring the corruption charges.

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New President Cyril Ramaphosa has been delphic in his response to the multitude of pointed fingers – not least because some of them are pointed at him.

It would certainly be dangerously naive to blame it all on former President Jacob Zuma.

No single person can lay waste to an economy. There have to be accomplices.

When and how they pay for pain and suffering they have caused is a matter for the cvourts.

The  muscular and independent judiciary has been the salvation of the Rainbow Nation. So whatever cynicism has grown in the nursery of our misery, we have to accept that the judges will continue to do an exemplary job in bringing the crooked politicians and officials to book.

It is for ourselves and our elected representatives to ensure the corruption never happens again.

Constant vigilance is essential.

And we’ll need some measurement of success.

Let me suggest the 25-year-old Berlin-based Transparency International.

TI’s annual Corruption Perception Index was published this week.

Once again it has depressing news for Sub Sahara Africa which once again takes up the bottom of the table.

Critics of the index say it is superficial because it relies on perception rather than hard fact.

Do you imagine TI or any other watchdog  would not use hard facts if these were available?

Cover up is the lifeblood of corruption. This is why government crackdowns on media and non governmental organisations trying to establish the truth invariably points to widespread corruption.

TI is also criticized for reducing the incidence to a single mark out of 100.

Surely anyone with even the most basic education understands percentage grades.

Would you prefer the obfuscation of what Winston Churchill called lies, damn lies and statistics?

This year, South Africa gets 43 on the index.

Its exactly the same as the global average, which TI says represents little or no progress worldwide in fighting corruption.

The cleanest country is New Zealand with 89 points  which scores and the most crooked is Somalia with only  9.

Don’t bother arguing over whether 43 is a passing mark.

We have a mark on the doorframe that we can compare next year.

Will it show we are winning the fight?

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The 25-year-old Berlin-based watchdog find that most countries are moving too slowly in their efforts to fight corruption

Transparency International’s annual Corruption Perception index is criticized because it reduces the level of a country’s graft to a single figure.

It cannot, of necessity, be based on reality which is most often officially obscured.

This year TI finds the world is making little or progress in fighting corruption while journalists and activists risk their lives daily in their efforts to speak out.

The organization’s supporters say its work succeeds in keeping the issue on official radars.

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The Transparency Corruption Index for 2017, now out scores  South Africa at 43 out of a possible 100.

It was 45 the previous year.

South Africa’s score of 43 on Transparency International’s latest  corruption perception index accords exactly  with the average of 180 countries assessed

That’s not necessarily comforting news from the Berlin-based international watchdog that finds countries are making little or no progress fighting graft.

This year, New Zealand and Denmark rank highest with scores of 89 and 88 respectively. Syria, South Sudan and Somalia rank lowest with scores of 14, 12 and 9 respectively. Sub-Saharan Africa with an average score of 32 is the worst performing region.

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At a push, politicians might discuss their vulnerabilities. Sporting stars never do.

So when George Weah talks about the pitfalls awaiting him as Liberia’s President, the football  ace holds sway over the relatively new politician.

“I am a human being he.” he says. “I strive to be excellent. I can succeed.”

No room for doubt there.

Many doubted that he could make it in the top European football leagues when he left Liberia to seek sporting fame.

And he delivered.

The jerseys he pulled over his head look like football-who’s who. Monaco, Paris Saint Germain, AC Milan, Chelsea, Manchester City.

To seal the deal he’s  the only African to win the coveted international footballer of the year award.

So who will question the ability of this 51-year-old who started kicking a ball in the Monrovia slum where he was born.

They said he was under qualified, so he cracked a business degree from a US university.

He failed to beat Ellen Johnson Sirleaf in 2005 when she became Africa’s first elected woman president.

But quitting is not George Weah. He became a senator in 2014 and contested for the presidency again. Successfully.

For him and for Liberia, this is only the start of  the match.

Liberian youth supported him overwhelmingly .

They comprise 60 percent of the country’s 4,6 million population.

Disappoint them and turn a generation against politics.

From great hope comes the possibility of great disillusionment.

In a country where 14 years of civil war is a living memory and where poverty, corruption, illiteracy inequality and under development are daily grinding realities this is a recipe for disaster.

Hardly surprising that on the eve of his inauguration Weah left the field, having played a friendly football match against an Army XI, saying his first priority is keeping the peace.

On the hustings he promised to beat corruption, establish better schools and create jobs.

In an economy  highly reliant on rubber and iron ore and dependent on foreign aid to make budgetary ends meet he has his work cut out creating jobs.

Transparency International declares that corruption in Liberia is endemic, permeating through all sectors of society.

So a man with a mountain of political debts to repay having won the presidency has a mountain to climb.

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf left a country at peace. But it is a country lagging way down the list on health, education and development.

George Weah goes into the match more than couple of goals down on the first leg.

Let us hope that the man with a golden boot can confound his doubters and prove us wrong.

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Angolan-Swiss citizen Jean-Claude Bastos says his takings pale by comparison with the earning he’s generated for the fund.

Jean-Claude Bastos is a close friend of former president Eduardo dos Santos’s 39-year-old son Jose Filomento.

He was put in charge of Angola’s sovereign wealth fund that generated $90 million between May 2014 and the end of 2015.

Bastos salted away $40-million in profit for himself and invested the rest in the British Virgin Islands.

Oil-rich Angola tops the list of Transparency International’s corrupt countries.

The majority of  Angolans live in abject poverty and it has among the highest child mortality rates in the world.

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The exercise is being seen as milestone of corruption.

A traffic ban’s been imposed and major roads have been sealed off in the capital Mogadishu.

Politicians have been peeling off wads of hundred dollar bills to buy votes in the country ranked by Transparency International as the most corrupt on the planet.

Candidates have shown up for parliamentary races standing next to a political nobody who was bribed or coerced into running against them, to make the race look fair.

In one case, the mysterious candidate was the politician’s maid.

Somalia’s been without a functioning central government for more than 25 years and has been propped up by billions of dollars of American aid.

United Nations officials have billed today’s presidential election as a milestone.

But several analysts, investigators and some Western diplomats say the election has turned out to be a milestone of corruption.

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