Public believes corruption keeps climbing, report finds

Most South Africans believe that corruption increased in the past 12 months, according to the 10th edition of the Global Corruption Barometer (GCB) Africa, despite the ANC’s efforts to clean up state-owned institutions and the private sector.

The South African Police Service (Saps) was considered the most corrupt institution, with a global average of 47% of people believing most or all police are corrupt; in South Africa, this figure rose to 49%.

“Of the 47,000 citizens surveyed in 35 African countries, more than half believe corruption is getting worse in their country, while 59% think their government is doing badly at tackling corruption.

“In SA, a staggering 70% believe the government is not doing enough to tackle corruption,” the report stated.

Since 2015, the police had consistently had the highest bribery rate across the continent.

In South Africa, 19% of the respondents who use police services reported having paid a bribe, up from 3% recorded in 2015.

A recent Corruption Watch report, Corruption in Uniform, highlighted the high levels of graft in the country’s policing sector.

South Africans also believed that local government officials were very corrupt (45%), followed by government officials and members of parliament, both at 44%. In addition, 37% believed most or all business executives were corrupt.

David Lewis, executive director of Corruption Watch, said: “The surveys were undertaken too early to constitute a definitive public judgment on the Ramaphosa administration’s performance.

“But it is clear the South Africans surveyed, like their counterparts on the rest of the continent, believe their governments are not doing enough to combat corruption.”

Lewis said they believed that their public institutions, including key oversight bodies like parliament and the law enforcement agencies, notably the police, were among the most corrupt.

The report findings showed that across Africa more than 25% of people who accessed public services, such as healthcare and education, paid a bribe in the previous year. This amounted to the equivalent of 130 million people.

Overall, men were slightly more likely to pay a bribe than women. The poorest were twice as likely to pay a bribe as the richest.

“It is also young people aged 18 to 34 who are more inclined to pay a bribe than people aged 55 and over,” the reported stated.

The report also focused on the significant role played by non-African actors in instigating corruption in Africa. This frequently results in resources being diverted away from essential services.

“These actors are predominantly represented by foreign companies who have made a practice of paying bribes to public officials to gain advantage during bidding or procurement processes, to secure overpriced deals and contracts,” reads the report.

The report recommended investigating and prosecuting all reported cases. This included allegations of bribery of foreign government officials by developed country multinational corporations.

– gcinan@citizen.co.za

For more news your way, download The Citizen’s app for iOS and Android.