Corruption in South Africa includes the improper use of public resources for private ends, including bribery and improper favouritism. Corruption was thought to be at its highest during the period of the alleged "state capture" under the presidency of Jacob Zuma but has remained widespread during the current "New Dawn" presidency of his successor Cyril, negatively "affecting criminal justice, service provision, economic opportunity, social cohesion and political integrity" in South Africa.
South Africa has a robust anti-corruption framework, but laws are inadequately enforced and accountability in public sectors such as healthcare remains below par. According to a 2021 Afrobarometer survey, 76.2% of South Africans believe that ordinary people risk retaliation and other negative consequences if they report incidents of corruption.
A scandal involving the Gupta family and former South African President Jacob Zuma pushed Zuma out of office as a long list of corruption complaints against the former President resurfaced. Complaints against Zuma range from the former leader's lavish spending of state funds, to awarding contracts based on nepotism, and businesses with familial connections or close ties benefiting through their association with him. The Zondo Commission was later created to investigate Zuma and his associates for corruption.
Corruption has also negatively impacted South Africa's ability to resolve the country's long-running energy crisis. Despite efforts to reduce corruption, it remains a significant problem facing the country with a 2024 Afrobarometer survey showing that it has significantly contributed to a large drop in public support for democracy whilst hindering efforts to reduce poverty, unemployment, and inequality.
Apartheid and corruption
Apartheid, a system of discrimination and segregation on racial grounds, dominated the ideology and political system in South Africa from 1948 to 1994. This system, which intentionally excluded non-Afrikaners from civil service jobs, government positions, and politics entirely, came to an end in 1994 when the African National Congress headed by Nelson Mandela conducted negotiations with the South African government at the time.
Before the abolition of Apartheid, the South African civil service was a pervasive medium for rent-seeking and the preferential treatment of Afrikaners. Policies favouring Afrikaner cultural and educational systems, the awarding of government contracts to Afrikaner businesses and the funding of parastatal Afrikaner organisations was a common phenomenon during the era of Apartheid. The building of rural homeland states in the 1980s created ideal projects for rent-seeking with many homeland leaders presiding over massive networks of patronage. A notable corruption scandal during apartheid was the Muldergate scandal that involved the improper use of public funds to conduct a pro-apartheid propaganda campaign; the scandal brought down the government of Prime Minister John Vorster.
During the anti-apartheid struggle, the African National Congress (ANC) was receiving funds from foreign donors in order to build up stronger opposition parties to protest against South Africa's National Party and Apartheid. These leaders were given large sums of money without formal bookkeeping. There are however no reports or evidence of corruption. The ANC's tradition of loyalty to the organization was shaped in the Apartheid era, with clear implications in modern-day ANC politics. In the middle years of Jacob Zuma's presidency, corruption became rampant in most government departments, intelligence agencies, the police and the military.
There is much ongoing debate regarding the origins of corruption and the definition of corruption in South Africa. The inherited bureaucracy and political culture which originated in the Apartheid era have rendered corruption issues hard to trace and tackle. The presidency of Jacob Zuma in 2009 created an environment where corruption flourished under the new leadership. Both the new and old political order created their own types of corruption, benefiting those in their inner circles. Although forms of endemic corruption were passed on to the new order in 1994, new forms of corruption have emerged adding new layers of theft from the State's purse.
Perception of corruption in South Africa
In 2013, Afrobarometer found a substantial increase in the public's perception of corruption since 2008. 66% of South Africans believed that the government could be doing more to curb corruption, compared to 56% elsewhere on the continent. South Africans' experience of first-hand corruption ranks among the least on a first-hand basis in Africa. At one stage only 15% of South Africans admit to having paid a bribe. The average percentage of all Africans who have paid bribes to government officials was around 30%.
Between 2011 and 2015, former President Jacob Zuma's public approval ratings almost halved, from 64% to 36%, possibly due to corruption scandals over that period. The majority of South Africans believe that various branches of government should oversee other branches of government's work. Around a quarter of South Africans feel they should be allowed to be responsible for holding elected representatives and leaders accountable.
Transparency International's 2025 Corruption Perceptions Index scored South Africa at 41 on a scale from 0 ("highly corrupt") to 100 ("very clean"). When ranked by score, South Africa ranked 81st among the 180 countries in the Index, where the country ranked first is perceived to have the most honest public sector. Since Transparency International began using its current scoring system in 2012, South Africa's score has varied between a high of 45 in 2016 and its lowest score of 41 in 2023, 2024 and 2025. For comparison with regional scores, the average score among sub-Saharan African countries was 32. The best score in sub-Saharan Africa was 68 and the worst score was 9. For comparison with worldwide scores, the best score was 89 (ranked 1), the average score was 42, and the worst score was 9 (ranked 181, in a two-way tie).
In 2021, 9.1% of South Africans believed that corruption was the most important problem facing the country, meaning that corruption ranked second only to unemployment in the priorities of those surveyed. 60.5% believed that the government was doing "very badly" at fighting corruption, and another 15.4% believed that it was doing "fairly badly."
Types of corruption in South Africa Although South Africa is subjected to various types of corruption, three notable forms are wasteful expenditure, state capture, and corruption related to or using Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) legislation. Recent state capture scandals involving South African politicians and the Gupta family have brought these types of corruption into the public spotlight. Petty corruption is another relevant issue affecting public services and day-to-day life in South Africa. Local municipalities have also been reported as significantly impacted by corruption with Corruption Watch describing them as amongst the most corrupt institutions in the country. A 2022 report by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime has described the presence of organised crime as "an existential threat to South Africa’s democratic institutions, economy and people." +Most prevalent sectors with reports of corruption in 2021.Sector% of total reportsThe most common type of corruptionProvince with the highest number of reports (percentage)Police10.0%Abuse of authorityGauteng (47%)Schools5.8%Abuse of authorityGauteng (37%)COVID-19 related corruption3.8%MaladministrationHousing3.1%MaladministrationGauteng (55%)Health2.7%Procurement corruptionGauteng (41%)Traffic2.7%Bribery and extortionGauteng (83%)Licensing2.3%Bribery and extortionMining1.2%MaladministrationLimpopo (31%)
State capture
State capture, a type of systemic political corruption in which private interests significantly influence a state's decision-making processes to their own advantage, became prevalent in South Africa during the presidency of Jacob Zuma (see section below).State Capacity Research Group. 2017. "Betrayal of the Promise Report ." Johannesburg: Public Affairs Research InstituteChipkin, Ivor, and Mark Swilling, et al. 2018. Shadow State: The Politics of State Capture. Johannesburg: Wits University Press. The most notable incident of state capture is the Gupta family scandal (see section below). State capture in South Africa has been estimated by the government to have cost the country up to R 250 billion (US$ 17 billion) between 2014 and 2017, and reduced the country's GDP growth rate by an estimated 4% a year. Former South African Treasury official Ismail Momoniat has stated that state capture during the Zuma administration caused such severe damage to the South African economy that it effectively reversed all the efforts of the Mandela and Mbeki administrations to develop the country's economy.
Black Economic Empowerment
Two notable types of corruption related to the government policies of BEE and Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment (BBBEE) are BEE fronting and political corruption.
Political corruption BEE and BBBEE requirements have been used to facilitate state capture in South Africa with government contracts improperly awarded, at inflated prices, to politically connected "tenderpreneurs," sometimes to the detriment of quality and service delivery. A notable criticism of BBBEE is that the policy has been co-opted and repurposed by factions and powerful members of South Africa's political elite, mostly within the governing ANC, for the purposes of corrupt self-enrichment at the expense of South Africans who are not politically connected, thereby fueling the growth of corruption within South Africa, reducing economic growth and increasing unemployment. Moeletsi Mbeki has argued that BEE is the biggest driver of corruption in South Africa.
BEE fronting BEE fronting is an abuse of the rules governing BEE, where qualifying persons are given a seat on the board of a company while having no decision-making power in the company, in order to qualify the company for government contracts in terms of BEE. In June 2017, Netcare, a company which operates the largest private hospital network in South Africa, was accused of BEE fronting. Since then, 17 other complaints have been filed against various South African companies regarding BEE fronting. Related to this is Cadre deployment and employment, which is an official ANC policy to colonize the government with officials loyal to the ANC.
Petty corruption Petty corruption is a prevalent issue in South Africa's public service sphere. A survey conducted by the ISS National Victims of Crime tested the extent and nature of petty corruption in South Africa. One of the main issues highlighted by this survey is South Africans' lack of access to information regarding how to report corrupt acts. The fear of facing repercussions for whistle-blowing and the pervasive belief that reporting corruption will not cause change are two other concerns revealed by the 2011 survey. Respondents of the survey were most likely to pay bribes to traffic officials, followed by police officers and officials in employment offices. These findings support the notion that the perception of corruption in local government departments such as traffic and municipal policing is high. The frequency of bribes involving police officers is concerning due to their role in tackling corruption and illicit behavior. Only 5.6% of South Africans reported experiencing forms of petty corruption involving money, favours and gifts. Even though the percentage of experienced corruption is low, the high perception of corruption has led respondents to prioritize corruption as the second most prevalent crime in the country.
Corruption scandals
Jacob Zuma and corruption