What the Madlanga Commission reveals about the gap between what organisations say they value and how they actually behave.

As South Africa follows the Madlanga Commission of Inquiry, one question should unsettle organisations everywhere: what do we mean when we say an institution is ethical? Is ethics having the right policies and formal structures in place? Or does ethics begin precisely where those things stop?

The hearings have exposed a familiar and troubling gap between formal institutional rules and what happens in practice. We have heard questions raised about relationships, appointments, procurement, interference, conflicts of interest, the use of public resources and failures to act when those in authority were expected to act.

That is the real crisis: what happens when unethical behaviour becomes normalised inside structures that officially claim to value ethics?

The limits of the ethics industry

Modern organisations have become remarkably sophisticated at talking about ethics. They have ethics officers, governance frameworks, committees, declarations, and training programmes. These mechanisms matter. But their existence does not automatically make an organisation ethical.

One of the great ironies of organisational life is that an institution can become highly skilled at managing the appearance of ethics without building an ethical culture. Ethics then becomes branding or compliance theatre, something done because it is expected rather than because it shapes how people actually behave. The difference becomes particularly clear when power or personal interests are at stake.

A genuinely ethical organisation does not ask only, “What does the policy say?” It also asks, “What is the right thing to do, even when doing it is inconvenient or personally risky?” That is where ethics moves from statement to practice.

Ethics is tested when there is something to lose

Most people can behave ethically when there is no cost attached. The real test comes when ethics collides with self-interest. A person may be asked to give someone preferential treatment or follow an instruction they know is questionable. Challenging it may come at a personal or professional cost. These are not abstract ethical dilemmas. They are the situations in which people discover what their organisation really expects of them.

It is in these moments that organisational ethics becomes real or is exposed as window dressing. The disturbing lesson from the Madlanga hearings may not be only about individual wrongdoing. It may also be about institutional permissiveness: the conditions that allow questionable conduct to continue and eventually become ordinary.

An ethical institution is not created simply by hiring ethical individuals. It also needs systems that support ethical conduct and respond appropriately when misconduct occurs. People who challenge that misconduct need to know they will be protected.

The dangerous phrase: “That’s how things are done”

Every organisation has two cultures. There is the culture written in its policies, and there is the culture experienced by its people. The first tells employees what they are supposed to do. The second teaches them what they can get away with. When those two cultures diverge for long enough, the informal culture starts to matter more than the formal one.

That is when people learn that raising concerns may harm their careers, while rules can become more flexible for people with influence. They may see questionable conduct being explained away and know that something is wrong without being willing to say so aloud. At that point, unethical behaviour no longer requires a conspiracy. It requires only silence.

Ethics for whom?

This brings us back to the harder question: ethics for whom? For junior employees, ethics often means strict compliance. But does it mean the same thing for powerful insiders? If conflicts of interest are treated seriously for ordinary employees but softened for influential people, the organisation does not have an ethical culture. It has a hierarchy of accountability.

That hierarchy is profoundly dangerous. Corruption does not always begin with someone stealing money. It can begin with a small exception or a conflict that is overlooked. Over time, those exceptions become easier to make. The rules have not disappeared; they have simply become optional for certain people.

The global lesson

The Madlanga Commission matters beyond South Africa because institutions everywhere proclaim their commitment to integrity. Companies have values, governments have laws, and professional bodies have codes. But none of these, on their own, creates an ethical organisation. What matters is how people behave, particularly those with power, and what the institution allows or refuses to allow.

Institutions become ethical when people in authority understand that their responsibility is not merely to avoid being caught doing wrong. They also have a responsibility to create an environment where people can do the right thing and know they will be supported when they do. That requires more than compliance. It requires moral courage.

From ethics as a statement to ethics as a system

The challenge emerging from the Commission is bigger than policing. It is a challenge to every organisation that has ever published an ethics statement. We should stop asking only whether an organisation has an ethics policy. We should also ask what happens when that policy is tested, particularly when powerful people are involved. Are the same standards applied, and does misconduct have consequences regardless of who is responsible?

The most revealing question is this: if nobody were watching, would this organisation still behave according to its stated values? If the answer is no, the problem is not a missing policy. The problem is culture.

The Commission’s eventual findings will belong to South Africa’s constitutional and institutional history. But the questions it has forced into public view belong to all of us. Institutions are not short of ethical language. The problem is what happens in the space between that language and actual behaviour.

Closing that gap requires more than another ethics initiative or statement of values. It requires leaders who understand that integrity is not measured by what an organisation says about itself, but by what it is prepared to do when acting with integrity becomes difficult.

That is where ethics stops being window dressing or ethics washing and becomes something real. And that is why the question is no longer simply, “Do you have an ethics policy?” It is: “Ethics for whom, and what happens when accountability is actually tested?”

About the author: Palesa Mashabane is an Ethics Subject Matter Expert at The Ethics Institute (TEI) and a Certified Ethics Officer. She holds a Postgraduate Diploma in Compliance Management, obtained cum laude from the University of Johannesburg. Before joining TEI, she spent more than 10 years at the Development Bank of Southern Africa, where her work focused on corporate governance and ethics management.