South Africa is a little short of role models on how to deal with corruption at the moment. The Un's Economic Commission for Africa will release a report next week on good governance in South Africa, which will include surveys if how corrupt South Africans perceive their politicians, police, judiciary and civil service to be.

The data are not yet public, but I hope the commission won't mind me making the general observation that some of the above categories do not come out well.

Democratic Alliance (DA) leader Tony Leon has built a substantial portion of his credibility by campaigning as a corruption fighter. In the wave of revelations from fugitive Jurgen Harksen, that image has been dented.

Some of the charges are unfair. The law does not allow the DA to fire Cape Town mayor Gerald Morkel on untested allegations.

But the DA has in the past called on the ANC to suspend, for instance, Tony Yengeni when serious but untested allegations were made against him.

So the DA looks inconsistent. Leon says he is unaware of any money from Harksen ever coming to the DA, and I believe him. But he has also said he could see nothing wrong if it had.

That is worse for the DA than it would be for any other party, precisely because it has built its image around incorruptibility.

US voters were not put off by Bill Clinton's womanising because they knew he did that when they first elected him. And Ronald Reagan's critics made no impact when they pointed to his repeated inaccuracies because those who voted for him knew he was not strong on facts to begin with.

But the DA has loudly criticised the ANC government for having meetings with Italian fugitive Vito Palazzola. So meetings with Harksen hurt, and arguing that there is nothing wrong with taking his money hurts too.

That is a political question, not a legal question. Taking money from a fugitive would be illegal only if it was known that the money was the proceeds of crime.

Corruption has also been back in the news with the death of Hansie Cronje. The United Cricket Board (UCB) had banned him for life, making it look tough on corruption. That decision was correct. What Cronje did, and his corrupting of impressionable young players, had to be dealt with in that way.

But the UCB even banned him from teaching cricket to children. Why? It seemed to be trying to tell the world it was being tough, and forgot when to stop.

Now that Cronje is dead, some have erred on the other side, saying they always backed him, ignoring his moral culpability. It seems to me the problem in South Africa runs deep.

We don't have a clear moral compass. Public debate veers from one extreme to the other. Everybody says they're against corruption, but they don't have a clear public message about what it is.

Political leaders from the Marxist tradition have said that capitalism is corruption. But they are managing a capitalist economy, so they are unclear what constitutes corruption in a system they see as intrinsically immoral.

When I joined the Independent Broadcasting Authority, we received presents, which I returned. My argument was : anything of more than nominal value should not be received from someone who would apply to us for a licence that could be worth anything up to R1 billion in revenue.

I soon found my instructions to send presents back were not being implemented. The managers - old guard managers, incidentally - were embarrassed to send back a present. It was intended to create goodwill, and this councillor was creating friction out of a friendly act! How could he be so arrogant and insensitive?

There were endless debates. Agreement was never reached. It was the most contentious issue ever before us, more than any of the decisions on the granting of radio and television licences.

There was and is a political culture that considers presents to be innocent acts of goodwill. Where does the line get crossed? We set up ceilings on the value of presents to be accepted, but they weren't honoured.

We need an honest debate in the public domain, which includes people in high levels of government, about what it is acceptable to receive, if anything, and why.

And of course the debate must include the business people who offer the bribes, I mean presents, in the first place.

With acknowledgements to John Matisonn and Business Report.