Thuli’s corruption amnesty: How well would you do at the Zondo Commission?

It’s easy to shake our heads and to tut disapprovingly at corruption revelations Zondo Commission; to celebrate quietly when an offender is arrested or prosecuted for some massive PPE (personal protective equipment) swindle. But if we’re honest, how well would we do if our lives were subject to an ethical analysis?

Corruption has been a national challenge from way back when colonisers began hustling produce and livestock from the local inhabitants. By the time wars and mass killings began, financial corruption went hand in hand with the moral corruption of the colonial project.

Over the centuries, corruption has been refined and adapted to suit changing material conditions. It is not peculiar to administrators, bureaucrats and officials, though. I think it’s fair to say that corruption is in our blood, as South Africans.

I would also be interested to read a study of the psychology of corruption, of law breaking in general. Because that is the true art of corruption: how we rationalise it. So many of us are inveterate law-breakers, but we tell ourselves it doesn’t matter. This self-delusion is what underpins the culture of law-breaking that we are all brought up with.

There’s a justification for almost every crime. And a reason why the rare person convicted of a crime feels hard done by. It’s simply not fair!

Thinking back to my childhood in distant prehistory, I recall how speeding on the roads was not really recognised as an offence in my family. It may even have been a rite of passage. Your first speeding fine. I remember my dad overtaking six, eight, ten cars in a row during our family holidays.

When my mom was issued a ticket, she was filled with righteous indignation at the injustice of being stopped and fined for this offence. “Look at those people!” she said. “They’re speeding. Why don’t you fine them?”

This is the “everybody does it” defence. It’s almost a cultural justification of crime. We do crime here. It’s part of our heritage. How dare you prosecute it! Forget the fact that speeding endangers lives.

These same principles were applied later in life, in the field of drunken driving, another life-threatening proclivity. We did it, and we continue to do it, because there is no affordable public transport at night. Uber is too expensive. It’s just a short trip back from the pub. And we only had one drink anyway. Maybe two. And besides, everybody does it.

The culture of transgression is dangerous. In one of my first jobs, my new colleagues inducted me into the dark arts of how to make fraudulent fuel claims. It was important that I do it the same way they did, or something would be spotted by the powers that be. As a 20-year-old, I found it incredibly difficult to resist being bullied into corruption, let alone develop a moral compass of my own.

Corruption is the culture in many other workplaces in the country. It extends to practices like bribes and inducements, embezzlement, violence and abuse, extortion of sexual favours, losing of dockets, a bit of drugs now and then, illegal electricity connections, tender allocations, you name it, as well as good old theft.

“They can afford it,” is another justification I have heard. It can be used by workers when stealing company supplies, but also I’m sure by finance professionals issuing double invoices and making illegal transfers.

At some traffic departments, “the only way” to get a driver’s licence is to pay a bribe to the testing official. But is it?

The problem with corruption is not a bunch of bad apples who need to be weeded out and sent to jail. That certainly needs to happen, but the main issue is that corruption is a part of South Africa’s way of life.

It is justified in a myriad ways – as a victimless crime, an act of defiance against exploitive capitalists, a way of subverting a legacy system of racism, as a trivial misdemeanour… Whatever way we try to give ourselves a pass, to explain and rationalise our personal little corruptions, we’re also complicit.

In its ultimate form, when it becomes endemic, corruption handicaps the state. Ours is a developmental state, so misdirecting, stealing resources and undermining the working of the country handicaps our ability to provide services and reduce inequality.

So before we call for the heads of corrupt officials, or demand jail terms or reject former public protector Thuli Madonsela’s idea for of a corruption amnesty… perhaps we need to take a long, hard look in the mirror.

How innocent would you be, if we conducted a Zondo Commission of inquiry into your life? If you’re confident that you would emerge unscathed, please share your ethical secrets with us.

Teach us, moral one, we need more of you.

Hagen Engler. Picture: Supplied

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