EthicSA is an independent, nonpartisan, not-for-profit organisation.
Our mission is to promote and advance ethical practices in South Africa – in the professions, business, and public policy, and among individuals. To this end, we serve as a resource, facilitate ethics initiatives, and work in partnerships with private and public institutions, as well as individuals.
Initiated and developed by South Africans with a view to local requirements and conditions, EthicSA’s operational and substantive activities are guided by values such as honesty, integrity, responsibility, excellence and fairness.
EthicSA is committed to:
Encouraging debate on ethical issues;
Initiating and facilitating ethics research;
Contributing to ethics education and training;
Producing ethics publications;
Facilitating development and implementation of ethics codes;
Providing ethics consultations and audits; and
Assisting development of public policy.
History
EthicSA was incorporated as a not-for-profit company in September 1999, opened offices in May 2000 and commenced ethics-related activities in August 2000.
EthicSA was born out of a joint initiative by the South African Medical Association (SAMA) and The Merck Company Foundation, based at Whitehouse Station, New Jersey, USA. In the late 1990s, the Ethics Resource Center (ERC), a Washington DC based not-for-profit ethics consulting and education organisation, undertook an in-depth feasibility study. They identified significant and widespread support for the establishment of an organisation generating ethics initiatives, while being independent of existing institutions.
The creation of EthicSA is an institutional response to a worldwide recognition of the relevance and importance of moral renewal in all societies, as well as to the current value and morality crisis in our own society. South Africa is experiencing an erosion of moral commitment and practice in a wide range of societal institutions, which not only costs the country an enormous amount in terms of resources and human suffering, but threatens the very foundations upon which civil and political society are based. This situation occurs in the aftermath of a prolonged period of moral deterioration that characterised the era of apartheid.
