BRIBERY IS IN THE EYE OF THE BEHOLDER

Good morning bloggers - still catching up - this is what should have been posted on the 2nd May.

Well it may be that according to this article, Bribery is in the eye of the beholder, but in my life bribery is an act, not anything else and it is wrong! This means that if you get caught speeding, you are responsible for your actions and need to take your punishment in that spirit.

If you commit a crime of any sort - you are accountable. If you want something, you need to earn it - not just be able to buy it.

In my opinion, bribery has become a way of life here in South Africa and quite frankly, we will never be able to deal with crime effectively if we view bribery "in the eye of the beholder".

Bribery is in the eye of the beholder

Tumi Makgetla

27 March 2007 11:59

Most people believe that corruption occurs to speed up approvals to which people are legally entitled, a survey has found. The number of people who believe this roughly equals the number of people who think that corruption is a means to ill-gotten gains. Business Against Crime and the German Technical Cooperation Agency commissioned the survey as part of business’s contribution to the South African National Anti-Corruption Forum. The recently published survey measures perceptions of corruption in the private sector. Although the study looks primarily at bribery as an indicator of corrupt behaviour, it also considers perceptions of unethical behaviour, such as nepotism. It concludes that, while South Africa does not have high levels of corruption, perceptions are important because a country that is perceived as corrupt may attract corrupt investors.“Changing the perceptions of the unethical culture in the South Africa business environment is essential for maintaining faith in the continued growth of the South African economy,” it states.

Some of the measures that respondents agree on to combat corruption include the public disclosure of names of convicted white-collar criminals, sharing information on corruption within industries and more vigilant investigative journalism. More active cooperation between business and the state and standards for sound financial reporting are also highlighted as potential deterrents. The Centre for Business and Professional Ethics at the University of Pretoria conducted the survey last year. It received responses from 760 businesses from across a wide spectrum of industries. The vast majority of these were domestically owned or controlled. Only a fifth of the respondents were listed on the stock exchange and a third were considered to be large enterprises. The general findings confirm a view that South Africa has relatively low levels of corruption. About 7% of the surveyed companies had individuals who had accepted bribes, with 11,5% of companies saying that they had been offered bribes but had not accepted. Sixteen percent of companies had received demands for bribes that they had not paid and 5,5% of companies met demands to pay a bribe. Respondents reported that bribes were demanded from other companies (26,3%), intermediaries (22,5%), local government (19,6%) and provincial or national government (10%).

The Pretoria University study cites an international comparison conducted by Transparency International, which ranks countries according to the frequency that ordinary citizens pay bribes. Five percent of South Africans responded that they had paid bribes to institutions like the police and education system. This put the country in the company of countries like the United States, Sweden and Turkey. The next band up, where 6% to 15% of citizens paid bribes include countries like Luxembourg, Russia and Colombia. The worst ranking countries included Albania and Cameroon, where over 40% of citizens reported paying bribes. In the Pretoria University study, most respondents said that bribes were under R10000 but nearly one-fifth said that the bribes were between R10000 and R50000.

The study found that middle management was most likely to be involved in corruption, followed by skilled and semi-skilled staff and then top management. It comments that the involvement of management is a concern because they should be responsible for ethical leadership. The survey also probed what forms of “gratification” were used in corrupt transactions. About 16% understood gratification to mean monetary bribes and kickbacks, followed by 13% who saw it as gifts, 11% who saw it as favours and 8% who saw it as excessive entertainment. Very few respondents, about 4%, knew of extortion or blackmail being used to get people involved in corrupt activities.

Gauteng is perceived to have the largest corruption problem, followed by Mpumalanga, the Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal.