Lack of jobs not cause of corruption

Sir,

I do not agree with people who say corruption is caused by the lack of jobs. Corruption is not committed by unemployed people in our townships or rural areas.

It is committed by politicians, public servants and businesspeople as they have access to lucrative State tenders in the public and private sectors.

Public officials who dish out tenders to their associates, public officials who sell passports and identity documents and officials who accept money to get rid of dockets are all corrupt. All these people involved in corruption receive handsome salaries from government every month. There are no poor unemployed people named in reports of the auditor general.

Committed

Yes, I agree that the lack of jobs contributes to crimes like housebreaking and theft. If corruption was committed by poor people, the police would have rounded them up, quickly tried and jailed them if found guilty. Politicians, public servants and businesspeople are the ones involved in corruption and are able to source the best legal minds to defend them in a court of law in case they are arrested.

Plan

Even in ancient times, prominent people were the ones involved in corruption. For example, when the chief priests had met with the elders and devised a plan to conceal the truth about Jesus’s resurrection, they gave the Roman soldiers a large sum of money, telling them; “You are to say, His disciples came during the night and stole him away while we were asleep. If this report gets to the governor (Pilate), we will satisfy him and keep you out of trouble. So the soldiers took the money and did as they were instructed.

And this story has been widely circulated among the Jews to this very day,” (Matthew 28:12-15).

The same modus operandi is still applicable in the 21st century throughout the globe. Construction mafias are public officials and their associates and not hungry or poor people. This is a known fact but law enforcement agencies do not want to intervene as they will step on the toes of the ‘big shots’.

Also, in my view, gender-based violence against women and children has got nothing to do with unemployment. People are just evil and wicked.