At Corruption Watch we like to take a contemplative look back over the previous year in order to gauge our progress, review the environment and consider the work that still needs to be done.

In doing this exercise, a much-quoted statement came to mind: “It was the best of times; it was the worst of times.” There seems to be no more appropriate way to describe the past year in South Africa than Charles Dickens’ Tale of Two Cities.

I know of few better statements that capture the tensions, apparent contradictions and the highs and lows that have characterised 2015 in our country, across the generational divide. A simple inventory taken today, in early January 2016, will paint a depressing picture, a litany of woes: an explosion of racist diatribe that has sought to polarise our society, a rand that continues on its downward spiral, unemployment digging in for the long haul, inequality as a glaring and stubborn stain on our democracy, and a remote leadership removed from, and oblivious to, the devastating impact of its actions.

And, of course, corruption – the canvas that forms the backdrop to our daily lives, that colours our conversations, that erodes our belief in the future and strips us of our zeal and drive to create a better society.

Written by Corruption Watch board chairperson, Archbishop Njongonkulu Ndungane