Accountability is a popular word. It represents many people’s solution to the crisis in service delivery, corruption and general lack of responsibility in public service. When there are no consequences, the temptation grows to enrich ourselves or to get away with doing less than we might. 

Some people have enough self-respect and learnt responsibility to remain accountable even when no-one notices. We should all be like that, but for most of us sustained accountability requires both rewards and punishments, underpinned by transparent assessment of performance. ..

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