An overwhelming majority of South Africans rate corruption as one of the main problems facing the post-apartheid order and, by implication, one on which the future welfare of their emerging nation depends. But the marked discordance between their perception and experience of corruption demands explanation.

The Country Assessment Report on Corruption, co-authored by the ANC-led government and the UN office on drugs and crime, records that eight in every 10 South Africans believe "there is a lot of corruption" in the fledgling society that came into existence with so much hope less than a decade ago.

For that reason they think corruption should be ranked high among the priority issues confronting the government.

As the report notes, however, there is an incongruity between the actual experience of corruption by SA citizens, from the ordinary man or woman in the street to officials in the civil service, and their almost visceral conviction that it is widespread. Extrapolating from surveys quoted in the report, it is evident that direct experience of corruption varies from a minuscule 2% for individuals to 11% for families or households.

A similar though less shrill dissonance is manifest between psychological perception and empirical experience in the business community: 62% of businessmen and -women categorise corruption as a serious issue in the business community against the relatively small percentage from whom a bribe has been either solicited (15%) or who have had to pay a bribe or an extortion fee (7% and 4% respectively).

Two complementary factors help to account for the discrepancy. One is the vigilance of the media in reporting actual or alleged cases of corruption, particularly those pertaining to politicians in the legislative and executive branches of government and to civil servants entrusted with the delivery of social services.

Hardly a day goes by without a major report of corruption in one form or another.

The media's portrayal of corruption as a frequent and ubiquitous occurrence in the new SA is reinforced by the number of top-ranking members of the ANC who have either been indicted by the courts for crimes that are classifiable as corruption - including bribery, extortion, fraud and theft of public money or donor money - or who are suspected of having committed these offences.

ANC notables whose probity has been blemished by court convictions include: Allan Boesak, the former provincial leader of the ANC in the Western Cape; Cynthia Maropeng, former deputy speaker of the Mpumalanga legislature; Tony Yengeni, former ANC parliamentary chief whip; and Winnie Madikizela- Mandela.

The impression that the ANC is struggling to contain corruption within its own ranks is strengthened by suspicions of financial improbity against men who are either situated in the uppermost echelons of the ANC or who have served in them in the past.

Among them are two men who occupy the second and third highest positions in the ANC hierarchy after President Thabo Mbeki himself: Jacob Zuma and Mosiuoa Lekota, who respectively serve as deputy president and national chairman of the ANC. These two men occupy appropriately high positions in the national cabinet: those of Deputy President and Minister of Defence respectively.

The allegation against Zuma is that he solicited a protection fee of R500 000 a year from Thales, the French-based armaments company that in an earlier form, when it was known as Thompson-CSF, won a contract to supply combat suites to four corvettes or frigates on order for the SA navy. Zuma has vigorously and repeatedly denied the allegations.

The shadow of impropriety has fallen across Lekota because of his failure to declare his business interests in wine and petroleum in the Free State and property in KwaZulu-Natal, as required by the parliamentary code of conduct and the Executive Members Ethics Act. Lekota avers that his failure to do so was an accidental oversight rather than a wilful act.

In the eyes of its political adversaries, these developments have blighted the ANC's election promises of 1994 and 1999 to govern in an open and honest manner and, of course, to take a tough stand against corruption.

Another more positive perspective emerges, however, when the ANC-led government is compared with the record of successive National Party (NP) governments between 1948 and 1994. Hennie van Vuuren, who heads a corruption-monitoring unit at the Institute for Security Studies, refuses to even consider comparison between the old and new regimes.

His rationale is that it is futile to compare "rotten apples" with apples. He may have a point. But, even if the two situations are not strictly comparable, it is instructive to assess corruption under the ANC-led government in the historical context of decades of NP government.

It is pertinent to recall that a senior member of the last NP government, Pietie du Plessis, was imprisoned for misappropriating trustee funds.

It should be noted, too, that two deputy ministers in the dying days of NP suffered the humiliation of imprisonment for monetary greed: Hennie van der Walt, a deputy minister in the now disbanded department of co-operation and development, was imprisoned for embezzlement; and Abe Williams, a former deputy minister of social development, who found himself on the wrong side of the law and in prison for succumbing to the temptation of bribery.

These transgressions almost certainly represent the proverbial tip of the iceberg, given the repressive legislation that the previous regime placed on the statute book to strengthen its capacity to deal with subversion and to halt the free flow of information and cover up the misdemeanours of its apparatchiks in the police force and the defence force.

And whatever the deficiencies of the ANC government in the fight against corruption, there is nothing comparable to the unlawful and covert use of huge sums of public money by the NP to establish clandestine death squads as part of its strategy of total defence of the existing order.

Nor is there any parallel in the ANC's record of governance to the previous regime's furtive diversion of public funds to establish a newspaper, The Citizen, to wage political war on its behalf and to hire journalist mercenaries in the US as proxies in its war against "terrorists" and their "communist allies".

The NP's moral trespasses serve as a reminder of what can happen if corruption is not checked timeously and if the ruling party begins to flirt with the dangerous notion that the end justifies the means.

Transparency International provides another context that needs to be borne in mind. SA is ranked 38th out of 102 countries on its International Corruption Perceptions Index for 2002. SA is the third highest-ranking African country after Botswana and Namibia.

Though SA's 38th place may not be particularly gratifying to those proud members of the ANC who take its commitment to open and clean government seriously, it does not - or should not - bolster "Afro-pessimists" who believe black government inevitably means descent into a morass of corruption and greed.

Nor should it be taken to mean there is no need for concern. The price of honest government, like that of liberty, is eternal vigilance. To that end the ANC-led government must be credited for putting in place measures and institutions to act as sentinels against corruption.

Many government departments have either established or are in the process of establishing dedicated internal anti-corruption units to underpin the integrity of their operations. They include the Department of Justice, the National Prosecuting Service and the South African Revenue Service.

The anti-corruption unit within the South African Police Service has been incorporated into the organised crime and general detective unit. The Country Assessment Report on Corruption believes the move will make the campaign against corruption in the police more efficient and "more accountable to the public".

Beyond that the government has adopted a national programme against corruption - for which it received a pledge of support from the UN office on drugs and crime - and established, in co-operation with the business community and civil society, a national anti-corruption forum.

Specialised units serving in the frontline against corruption include the special investigating unit and assets forfeiture unit, under the leadership of Willie Hofmeyr. These two units are underpinned by legislation that empowers them to seize and recover profits and assets acquired through criminal activities.

Another powerful anti-corruption unit is the one that operates with the Directorate of Special Operations (alias the Scorpions) which, though operating under the immediate aegis of the National Prosecuting Authority, falls under the ultimate authority of the presidential office.

Another sign of the ANC's commitment to containing corruption is its leading role in crafting a new anti-corruption law to replace the Corruption Act of 1992 which, while criminalising the acceptance of money or gifts by public officials, does not specifically and rigorously criminalise the actions of those who offer bribes in return for preferential treatment.

The Prevention of Corruption Bill that is being forged in parliament breaks new ground. The bill reinstates the common law crime of bribery, creates the presumption of prima facie proof of the alleged offence to make prosecution easier, and extends the scope of the legislation to all public officials and private citizens, including agents who might act for them.

One of the underlying assumptions of the bill is that a more effective anti-corruption law must be underpinned by harsher penalties. There is undoubtedly an array of laws and institutions that offer the means to excise corruption from post-apartheid South Africa.

As important, they reflect the will by the ANC to do so. But they are endangered by the proclivity of the ANC leadership to place a greater premium on protecting its leaders than pursuing the fight against corruption.

Closely linked to that is its penchant for characterising its opponents as unreconstructed racists or, if they are black, as the useful idiots of the racists. By so doing the ANC shuts it ears to warnings that it might do well to heed.

This article first appeared in Focus 31 (September 2003), published by the Helen Suzman Foundation.

With acknowledgements to Patrick Laurence and the Cape Times.