Most South Africans Believe Bribes Needed to Get Ahead, Says Survey

More than three-quarters of South Africans faced with having to pay a bribe pay it, according to a new survey, and almost half of all bribery takes place in Limpopo.

The South African Citizens’ Bribery Survey 2015 was released this week by the Ethics Institute of South Africa. Of the 6,380 people surveyed, 26 percent said they knew of someone who had been approached for a bribe; of those, 75 percent paid it.

The institute said that while some findings were expected, others challenged the accepted perceptions. It said that next to driving fines, the job sector was the area most bribes were found in, not high-end jobs but the lower end of the spectrum.

The institute said it carried out the survey because it often heard the words “Bribery is a big problem in South Africa.” Even though most of the information it collated was anecdotal, the institute said it wanted to get a clearer picture of the extent of bribery in the country.

The survey was carried out in four Massmart stores in Johannesburg, Durban, Cape Town and Polokwane, and was sponsored by Massmart ad Walmart.

Based on these findings, it said, bribery was worst in Limpopo (48 percent), followed by KwaZulu-Natal (26 percent) and Gauteng (25 percent) and Western Cape (19 percent). The median bribe amount, the institute found, was R1,000 and the average bribe paid was R100.

The top five reasons for bribes were traffic fines, getting jobs, getting drivers licenses, getting tenders, and a small percentage were from getting illicit discounts from businesses or stealing from businesses.

The survey said that, interestingly, while 78 percent of respondents felt it was impossible to get ahead in life without paying a bribe, only 20 percent knew someone who had paid a bribe in the last year.

Numerous examples of everyday bribes were given, whether it was for selling drugs, for drunk driving, for a matric certificate, to have a murder docket disappear, to not have electricity cut off, to speed up an unabridged birth certificate being issued, to become a policeman/ nurse/ teacher/ miner, or to get a child grant. See more in the survey.