I am going to say something today that I was so sure for so long I would never say; something that I told many an audience over more than a decade would never happen: corruption has become systemic, has become a part of our culture in South Africa.

We have now become like Angola and Nigeria. Bribery, theft of public money, tender fraud and general racketeering are no longer aberrations condemned by society, they're accepted as normal.

What I thought was an almost understandable human weakness of "it's now our turn", a sense of entitlement after the end of the struggle against apartheid, has moved on to become an integral part of how our state and our ruling party operate.

This is why pollsters tell us a sizeable chunk of ANC supporters believe the allegations of criminal behaviour against their leader, Jacob Zuma, may well be true, yet they will still vote for him.

This is why I won't be surprised if the reports that all charges against Zuma will be dropped, eventually prove to be true.

What the hell, why not appoint Tony Yengeni Minister of Finance?

It was when I was told that Parliament spent hundreds of thousands of taxpayers' rands to close the door on the Travelgate scandal and that 60 MPs got away with stealing from their voters that it finally dawned on me that we had moved beyond a tipping point with corruption.

It meant that there is now no possibility left of claiming back the millions lost through the dishonesty of the MPs and travel agents. It means the ANC is condoning the fact that members voted into Parliament by the citizens steal from Parliament without any sanction.

Yes, I know, I was naive.

I was naive, as white racists told me thousands of times, to believe the liberation movement would have higher ethical standards than the evil apartheid regimes of Verwoerd, Vorster and Botha.

The ANC apparatchiks clearly didn't "struggle to be poor".

Perhaps it is true that they fought for power, perhaps even freedom, but certainly not for a decent and moral democracy.

Of course the signs have been there for a very long time.

But suddenly the evidence that the ANC has the cancer of corruption growing in its very heart has become overwhelming.

Like putting someone found guilty of fraud and unlikely to withstand a legal challenge to her candidature at number five on the electoral list - someone who had earlier been convicted of the kidnapping of a young boy who died a horror death shortly afterwards. Winnie Madikizela-Mandela.

Like tasking another fraudster who is not allowed to take up a seat in Parliament, Tony Yengeni, to lead the ANC's election campaign in the Western Cape.

Like refusing, in the face of overwhelming suspicion of possible dirty dealings, to order a review of the release on medical parole of the man found guilty of bribing the leader of the ANC.

Virtually every week now a new scandal breaks of senior ANC personnel or top bureaucrats committing fraud or theft or bribery or nepotism.

ANC leaders condemn corruption in public statements, but few crooks in the party ever suffer any consequences.

And all this happens in the dark shadow cast by the massive and massively corrupt arms procurement deal which the government and the ANC refuse to have investigated properly.

Andrew Feinstein, a former ANC MP and member of Scopa, wrote a damning book about the arms deal scandal with first-hand evidence of gross wrong-doing.

But he might as well not have bothered - it had no effect.

We hear former president Thabo Mbeki had meetings with French arms traders, but he simply can't remember.

We hear he received $22 million from the arms dealers and gave most of it to the ANC's election fund, but no one investigates that any further. Just like Oilgate.

One of the top men in the South African Communist Party stole a paper bag with R500 000 in cash in it that was donated to the party, but nobody gets prosecuted.

We make a big hullabaloo out of ANC spokesman Carl Niehaus's dishonest behaviour, but let's be honest: his only real sin was that he got caught.

We're in trouble, we really are.