Chapter 2

Conceptual and Practical Understandings of Corruption

How should corruption be defined and understood? What are examples of corrupt behaviour? One of the most intractable debates in the anti-corruption literature is that around definition, despite the fact that most people, most of the time, know corruption when it is encountered. Corruption is a highly complex and diverse phenomenon with many different manifestations. It can be grand or petty, incidental, systematic or systemic. It can be judicial, administrative, legislative or political in nature. It can occur in the public, private or civil society sector. It can involve groups or individuals. Academics from various disciplines (including lawyers, historians, moralists, economists and political scientists) and international organisation experts define it in various ways.

Definitions of corruption

There is no room for a comprehensive discussion of definitions of corruption. However, some of the more well-known ways in which corruption has been defined, include:

"the giving, offering, or agreeing to give a benefit to an official or agent and the receiving, obtaining or agreeing to receive or attempting to obtain a benefit by a public official or agent";5



"the violation of formal rules governing the allocation of public resources by officials in response to offers of financial gain or political support";6



"behaviour which deviates from the formal duties of a public role because of private-regarding (personal, close family, private clique) pecuniary or status-gains; or violates rules against the exercise of certain types of private-regarding behaviour";7



"the abuse of public roles or resources for private benefit";8



"the abuse of power, most often for personal gain or for the benefit of a group to which one owed one’s allegiance. While the term ‘corruption’ is most often applied to abuse of public power by politicians or civil servants, it describes a pattern of behaviour that can be found in virtually every sphere of life";9



"a symptom of something gone wrong in the management of the state where institutions designed to govern the relationships between citizens and the state are used instead for the personal enrichment of public officials and the provision of benefits to the corrupt";10 and



"C(corruption) = M (monopoly power) + D (discretion) — A (accountability). In other words, the extent of corruption depends on the amount of monopoly power and discretionary power that officials exercise and the degree to which they are held accountable for their actions."11

From the above definitions, corruption appears to be more than bribery (to which it is often reduced in legal definitions), and relates to various forms of mismanagement, abuse or misuse of mainly public authority, office, duties, trust or resources, for private, personal or sectoral interest, benefit or gain.

Understanding of corruption

The sample of experts were tapped for their understanding of corruption as well as for examples of corrupt practises. Should South Africans share a common definition and understanding of corruption, intervention strategies to control it can be appropriately fine-tuned to reflect this shared definitional congruence.

In an open-ended question, experts consulted in the survey were asked what they understood by the word ‘corruption’. The question elicited highly individual qualitative responses, although recoding these into nine broader categories showed a number of distinct features of corruption. Respondents were able to provide multiple responses, should their understanding include a number of different concepts (table 2).

Issues of abuse (62) whether of power, position, public funds and resources, authority or office for private benefit or personal gain stood out as the underlying conceptual understanding of corruption among the experts.

Illicit self-enrichment (23), including ‘illicit gains’ as well as ethics (23), were equally important categories in the understanding of what constitutes corruption. Experts referred to ‘moral or unethical behaviour’, ‘lack of integrity’, ‘dishonesty’ or ‘greed’, which were all captured under the category of ethics.

Where bribery or payment (21) for services such as ‘accepting bribes’, ‘payment for favours’, ‘delivery of services for payment’ is explicitly mentioned, responses were captured in a new category.

The other (19) category captured the remaining understandings of corruption that could not be fitted into the above categories, such as ‘an economic system that excludes the poor’ or ‘collusion’.

Other understandings of corruption included corruption as a crime (18), for example ‘theft’, ‘white-collar crime’, or ‘extortion’.

Corruption understood as ‘improper influence’, a ‘conflict of interest’ or ‘nepotism’ was captured as undue influence (17).

The category of maladministration (10) included ‘side-stepping of regulations’, as well as ‘inefficiency’. Prejudice (5) was also specified under the experts’ understanding of corruption and included ‘omission of duty resulting in prejudice’ and ‘intended beneficiaries prejudiced’.

Examples of corruption

When asked to give an example of corruption, corruption in contracts and tenders was mentioned the most (27), followed by nepotism (13) and fraud/misrepresentation (11).

Other examples of corruption mentioned more than five times included bribery (9), bribery of police/traffic police (8), abusing public resources (8), abuse of position for personal gain (7), government official taking back-hander (6), delivery of services for payment (6), conflicts of interest (6), purchase of qualifications (5) and misappropriation of funds (5).

A number of experts used actual high-profile cases as examples of their understanding of corruption. These included individual cases such as Hansie Cronje, Allan Boesak and Abe Williams.12

It appears as if the experts’ understanding and examples of corruption rest on the widely held view of corruption as an abuse of a public resource or good for a private end or benefit. That illicit self-enrichment and ethics also feature prominently points to an individualistic understanding of corruption as an incidental, opportunistic phenomenon of corrupt greedy individuals, rather than an entrenched, systematic way of doing things. Corruption understood commonly as bribery and involving money in some form or another, is another prominent understanding of the concept shared by the expert sample.

The most cited example of corruption relates to contracts and tenders. This may point to an awareness among the expert group of the highly publicised allegations of irregularity in the government’s multibillion rand arms procurement deal, or may indicate an awareness of more widespread irregularities in the public procurement system. Interestingly, nepotism was mentioned as the second most frequent example of corruption. However, following allegations by opposition political parties of widespread nepotism in the government a few years ago, an investigation by the office of the Public Protector found that none of the charges were justified.13

Fraud is often used interchangeably with corruption and it is therefore not surprising that it features as the third most common example of corruption cited by the experts, followed closely by bribery. The readiness with which the terms bribery, fraud and corruption are grouped together in common parlance perpetuates the ‘woolly thinking’ that surrounds the corruption phenomenon, obfuscating the real and distinctive features of these practices.

The proposed Prevention of Corruption Bill defines corrupt practices and offences more broadly than ever before in South Africa with over 20 offences and penalties spelled out in the draft legislation which sought to cover all possible corrupt activity. Offences related to accepting and giving undue gratification, bribery of public officers and foreign public officials, of using office or position for undue gratification, are just a few of the corruption-related offences proposed in the bill.