Can we quantify corruption or authoritatively comment on trends in corruption in South Africa? How
should we assess quantitative data emerging from criminal justice agencies or other investigative
bodies, anti-corruption hotlines, or corruption surveys? How is this data meaningful and helpful in
understanding the nature and extent of corruption in South Africa?
In recent years concern about corruption has increased in South Africa. But although it is widely
discussed there is often a lack of specificity when it is discussed. To address this problem a greater
degree of precision is needed when corruption is reported on or analysed. For instance, greater
clarity is needed on the precise meaning of the various forms of corruption. Is bribery different
from procurement corruption or nepotism in the employment domain? When developing strategies
to address corruption, should we assume that corrupt actions generally involve two discrete
parties? Does corruption inevitably involve role-players from the private sector? Related to this, is
it meaningful to talk about private sector corruption? What should be made of surveys that claim
to quantify overall levels of bribery or levels of exposure to corruption by people accessing services
from government departments? Should data from surveys be regarded as a reliable guide to overall
levels of corruption?
This monograph aims to engage with questions such as these. In the first part it provides examples
of reports on corruption by government and civil society organisations. These illustrate that different
agencies consistently apply different approaches to classifying forms of corruption, while reports
providing quantitative data consistently fail to explain the approach they have used to differentiate
forms of corruption from one another. In addition, anomalies are often present in the labelling of
forms of corruption, resulting in the data provided in these reports becoming confusing.
A preliminary objective of this monograph is to provide a more clearly articulated system for labelling
and differentiating the key visible manifestations of corruption in South Africa. The assumption is that
a more clearly defined system of classifying acts of corruption will support greater analytical clarity
in comparing these acts. Defining corruption as ‘the abuse of public position for private gain’, the
second part of the monograph attempts to provide such a system to categorise manifestations of
public sector corruption. Five primary categories and 14 associated subcategories are defined. The
following five forms of corruption and their subcategories are then described and discussed:
Executive summary2 Counting the covert: using data to understand corruption in South Africa
• Procurement corruption
• Other bribery and extortion
• Misappropriation, embezzlement, fraud or theft
• Nepotism in appointments and promotions
• Other mismanagement or abuse of state resources (sometimes corrupt)