“Corruption thrives when there’s an absence of public accountability, where the levels of transparency in governance are lacking and where a culture of impunity takes root. And all three of those factors are available in abundance in South Africa.”

David Lewis is the head of Corruption Watch, a non-profit organization.

“There is plenty of vulnerability in the system for those who would abuse it, to take advantage of it. And, and, you know, it’s one of the things that we’re beginning to recognize which I think makes combating corruption so difficult is that there is around every public sector resource, there are sort of interests clustered who are living off them -- sometimes living quite, you know, relatively speaking, quite elaborately off them. And, so these are, these are difficult to, to tackle.”

The South African government is answering the report with new efforts to fight corruption. Lindiwe Sisulu is the minister for public service and administration. She says the government will create a new anti-corruption agency, and her ministry will ask the legislature to approve more anti-corruption laws.

The South African Police Service announced plans to launch a new anti-corruption department within the next six months. But the Service’s Lt. General Solomon Makgale said police are not the only ones to blame.

“Some of the media reports -- well most of them -- they put a lot of emphasis on the police who are being corrupted. They forget that there is an equal responsibility on the person that is doing the corrupting.”