Live and let bribe

10 December 2015 - 02:57 By Katharine Child

South Africans believe that to get through the day you'll have to pay a bribe. And the results of a survey released yesterday indicate that 10% of people believe bribery should be legalised."If we think everybody is doing it [paying bribes] it becomes easier for people to justify it to themselves," says the report, authored by The Ethics Institute.The institute and Massmart asked 6300 people for their views on bribery."The perception that bribery is part of life is a manifestation of the South African culture of impunity," said Paul Hoffman, director of the Institute for Accountability."If this endemic corruption continues South Africa will become a failed state."In the survey rich and poor across South Africa were asked about the likelihood of "a friend" paying a bribe. Participants were not asked about themselves because social-science researchers have found that people are unlikely to admit their own wrongdoing, said Deon Rossouw, head of The Ethics Institute.Some bribes reported included "paying to get away with a murder case or to avoid arrest for selling drugs".The most common bribes were paid to avoid paying traffic fines.Reasons cited by survey respondents for their "friends" paying bribes included:To get a cheap cellphone deal;To get water from a municipal tanker;To avoid jail time for theft;To get a police officer to "lose" a case docket;To speed up the delivery of an unabridged birth certificate;To get electricity restored;To get a child grant; andTo avoid prosecution for drunken driving or possession of an illegal firearm.A surprising finding was that 17% of the bribes admitted to were to secure a job.Unskilled people felt they were "expected" to pay bribes to get sought-after employment.One said "It is a matter of life or death for uneducated people".This illustrated how vulnerable, unskilled people were exploited, said the institute.It also showed that bribes were often more about need than greed, and that people put "bread first, morals later".Bribes are more commonly paid to cashiers for discounted or free goods at shops than to the police or for fake education qualifications.The private sector was facing a serious corruption problem, said Roussouw."International research shows that 10% of people are inherently corrupt, 10% will be honest no matter what, and 80% can be swayed either way," said Gavin Woods, a corruption consultant said.People can be tempted into corruption by the perception that corruption is endemic in their society and by the belief that they are unlikely to be caught.Woods said: "Criminology shows that people need a motivation to be corrupt and an opportunity - and they need to be able to rationalise their behaviour."The pervasiveness of bribery in South Africa allowed people to justify it easily, he said.The survey results were released a week after a Transparency International survey revealed that at least 83% of South Africans believed corruption had increased in the past year.In that survey, 7% of the respondents said they had paid a bribe. The Ethics Institute survey arrived at a figure of 25%.Tellingly, in South Africa - rocked by a number of corruption scandals, including the spending of R246-million of public money on President Jacob Zuma's private home in Nkandla - 79% of the Transparency International respondents said the government is doing poorly in fighting corruption.Hoffman said: "If South Africa got all the money back that had been lost to corruption, we wouldn't have pit toilets at schools, hospitals without equipment and universities without money."Without an independent and effective Chapter 9 institution [such as the public protector] dealing with bribery it will continue."To combat corruption, suggested the institute, it would be necessary to dispel the perception that corruption was unlikely to be punished.Sting operations were effective in exposing bribery and the institute suggested a clampdown on corruption in traffic departments...

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