Cricket not the only thing we can learn from Australia

Yesterday, the premier of an Australian state resigned after misleading a corruption investigation about a gift of a bottle of wine.

It was admittedly a rather good bottle, a 1959 Penfolds Grange valued at $2800, but New South Wales premier Barry O'Farrell's decision to fall on his sword has been widely praised in Australia.

"I think what it shows is that we have a higher bar here," professor Adam Graycar, an expert on global corruption, told Reuters. "In New Jersey, nobody would think of stepping down for a bottle of wine."

That applies not only to New Jersey. If past practice in South Africa is anything to go by, few senior political officials would step down here either.

South Africans have lost count of the politicos who have clung to their jobs like leeches - no doubt hoping to be rewarded with a golden handshake or redeployment - despite being caught with their hands in the till.

A minister who splurged taxpayers' money to visit his girlfriend in a Swiss prison, another who ensured that her boyfriend benefited massively from an ICT indaba, a police chief who accepted gifts from a gangster and another implicated in a lease scandal all insisted to the end that their hands were clean, and all had to be fired.

Our president's resolute denial of any wrongdoing in the Nkandlagate scandal, despite a damning finding by the public protector that he and his family benefited unduly from the R250-million "security upgrade" to his private home, is perhaps the most egregious example of this refusal to take responsibility.

The O'Farrell case speaks volumes about why Australia was ranked the ninth-least corrupt country last year, while South Africa was 72nd out of 177 countries.

Our wealthy traditional sporting rival has far fewer developmental challenges than we do, but its political leaders have succeeded where ours have failed - in building a political culture where even a suspicion of corruption is taboo.