South Africa is mediocre in the world corruption stakes. Reg Rumney reports on a corruption study that finds the country not so guilty
South Africa ranks right in the middle of a 1995 corruption ranking of 41 countries.
The Corruption Ranking is the result of a study done by Berlin-based Transparency International and the University of Goettingen, Germany.
On a scale of 0 to 10, South Africa, with a score of 5,62, comes 21st, well ahead in the cleanliness stakes of countries like Argentina, Hungary, Italy, Brazil, and China, to name but a few. South Africa is the only African country ranked.
A 10 indicates a perfectly clean country, say the authors of the survey, while a zero refers to a country where business transactions are entirely permeated by corruption, involving huge sums in kickbacks, extortion, fraud and the like.
While Indonesia is judged the most corrupt with a ranking of 1,94 New Zealand tops the cleanliness list at 9,55. It is followed by Denmark (9,32) and Singapore
Singapore is remarkable in being the only Asian country to be judged among the least corrupt. Most Asian countries found themselves in the company of Italy (2,99), Brazil (2,70), and Venezuela (2,66).
Japan (6,72), Malaysia (5,28), and Taiwan (5,08) were
Ian Katz, The Guardian’s New York correspondent, reports that in many countries, particularly in Asia, accepting pay-offs is not considered unethical even if westernising governments have sought to make them
South Africa is not cleared completely. The rankings are based on a number of surveys, including three from the World Competitiveness Report. The list states the variance in the rankings. For South Africa, a high variance of 2,35 points to rankings that range from 4,1 to7,1, indicating a big difference of opinion about how corrupt the country is.