Almost three quarters of South Africans think corruption is getting worse and is becoming a way of life, affecting police officers and senior levels of government, a survey shows.

The poll comes as police prepare to arrest 40 current and former members of parliament over a R17-million travel expenses scam.

But almost half of those questioned by Research Surveys said they believed corruption was not as bad as elsewhere in Africa.

"This may be more a statement about how bad the rest of Africa is rather than we are better," the pollster's chief executive Henry Barenblatt said

"Black see cops as corrupt, with whites it's politicians"

Of 500 adults questioned, 76% said corruption was getting worse and 74% that it had become a way of life.

A total of 79% said there was corruption at senior levels in government and 75% said many police officers took bribes.

Blacks were more likely to say that police officers took bribes, while whites were more likely to accuse senior government officials of corruption.

Barenblatt said a hard core of whites tended to distrust South Africa's black-run African National Congress government more than a decade after the end of apartheid.

Apartheid had left many blacks distrusting the police, although it was not clear whether their perceptions of corruption were also based on personal experience, he said.

But South Africans appear to trust newspaper and television reporters to keep an eye on corrupt officials, with 67% agreeing with the statement "the media exposes most corruption".

The travel expenses scam is one of the biggest corruption scandals in post-apartheid Africa.

In a separate case, Deputy President Jacob Zuma's financial advisor Schabir Shaik is on trial in Durban over accusations of paying Zuma bribes in exchange for his influence over arms and other government contracts.

He has pleaded not guilty.

"What the government needs to show is some high profile successes against corruption," according to Barenblatt.

"There doesn't seem to be closure on some of these cases. They just drag on."

With acknowledgements to Peter Apps, Reuters and The Star.