Corruption taking a tighter grip on South African society
THE corruption habit begins early in South Africa, with children bribing schoolgate guards a few cents to let them out to buy sweets.
‘‘You pay a bribe and you get away with it. It becomes a habit. Most people say corruption is part of our culture,’’ says Lucky Menoe, an activist with a South African anti-corruption organisation, Corruption Watch.
Menoe works with children who report their experience paying bribes at schools – to get a copy of an exam paper in advance, or to pass a subject. He runs programmes to try to educate them to say no to requests for bribes.
In a sign of public anger over rising government corruption, a public coalition of unions, anti-corruption activists, legal rights groups, churches, organisations representing the poor, homeless people and opposition parties has led protest marches against corruption in Pretoria and Cape Town – the first mass anti-corruption protests since the governing African National Congress took power in 1994.
The most common brush with corruption comes on roadsides, where police, their badges artfully hidden, pull over drivers for minor offences and demand a ‘‘cold drink’’ or to ‘‘buy me tea’’.
But in recent years, corruption has crept into almost all areas of life, according to David Lewis, director of Corruption Watch.
‘‘People are reporting it across the board. It has increased significantly.’’
He said people had to pay bribes to hospital staff, school principals and teachers, and housing authorities, and for permits, documents, licences and contracts from government authorities.
Beyond bribes, corruption surfaces in the form of cronyism. That woman running the school snack shop? She’s the principal’s wife. The man called in to resurface a school playground? One of his pals.
It’s the same story with many municipal authorities and government departments, with jobs and contracts given out not on merit but to close friends, contacts and relations, according to activists. A demonstrator carries a placard depicting South African President Jacob Zuma at a protest against corruption in Cape Town.
Community health worker Cynthia Bushela said that, because of corruption, it was impossible to get a job in a hospital.
‘‘If you want a job, they only take their families. They don’t take the right people. They take people with no qualifications,’’ she said.
‘‘It’s everywhere – the government jobs, in the factories and companies. You have to pay a bribe to get a job.’’
Lewis said widespread corruption had frayed public confidence in the government, the ANC, and institutions such the police, the judiciary and parliament.
According to a 2013 report by corruption watchdog Transparency International, 36 per cent of South Africans reported having bribed police in the previous year, while a slightly higher percentage had paid a bribe to get a permit, licence or other document.
But they also reported paying bribes for healthcare, education, electricity and water. Nearly a third had bribed a judge or magistrate.
South Africa was ranked 67th out of 176 countries in TI’s index on perceptions of corruption last year, sliding from 38th in 2001.
Police were seen as extremely corrupt by 83 per cent of South Africans, followed by political parties (77 per cent) and public officials (74 per cent). But more than half said the judiciary, health services and business were extremely corrupt, and nearly a third said schools and universities were corrupt.
Some of the most vulnerable victims of government corruption are refugees and migrants, mainly from other African countries, trying to get legal documentation to permit them to stay in South Africa, according to activists.