South Africa’s democratic transition in 1994, supported by its widely admired Constitution,
transformed the country from pariah status into a global model for human rights and social
justice. Yet it failed to sustain this promise, as shown by declining socio-economic indicators and a drop in its Corruption Perceptions Index score from above 50 in the mid-1990s to 41 in 2025.
State capture, procurement irregularities, failures in state-owned enterprises, and
weak public-sector accountability have fuelled widespread cynicism among South Africans,
many of whom have grown numb to the relentless revelations of looting.
Disturbingly is the venality with which resources aimed at uplifting the poorest segments of
society are cynically diverted, and the impudence of perpetrators flaunting ill-gotten wealth
when exposed in public commissions of inquiry. A shameful rejoinder came from the World
Health Organization director-general Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who condemned the theft of personal protective equipment and corruption in administering funds earmarked for Covid relief in South Africa, tantamount to “actual murder”.
Dynamics of corruption in human evolution
To dissect this phenomenon of unchecked corruption in a country that held so much promise, it would be instructive to examine the dynamics of corruption in human evolution and how that manifest and entrench in societies in transition. Comparative studies suggest that cooperation and collaboration, foster fairness responses in most humans. This distinguish humans from our closest living relative, chimpanzees, which do not share the same sense of fairness in sharing when advantages of cooperation are distributed as a reward.
Since diverging from a common ancestor millions of years ago, humans were compelled through complex group dynamics to work together for survival and dominance as a species. As a species, humans are fragile, physically much less powerful than, say, predators with, infant dependency on adult care required for periods much longer than that of most mammals.
Surviving the dangers of the prehistoric world was predicated on effective cooperation and sharing. Dissenters or those failing to abide by this social pressure of working together, inexorably led to ostracism and demise of those that buck this trend. Since evolution is expected to weed out the power-hungry and entitled, the extreme levels of corruption prevalent globally may seem puzzling.
Lessons from hunter-gatherers
So, it is correct ask why corrupt individuals seem to thrive in direct opposition of this evolutionary impulse. At the heart of hunter-gatherer life among the Kalahari’s indigenous communities are rituals that reflects the core principles of egalitarianism. Among the San people of Southern Africa, the spoils of hunting or gathering is distributed equitably throughout the camp or settlement.
This system of sharing precludes the accumulation of private property or status and ensure
the protection of the weak and vulnerable. Measures designed to prevent boasting include
randomising arrows during a hunt to prevent domination of single individuals having superior aim and mocking of the quality of hunting spoils. Should any individual choose to assert himself as dominant, humbling rituals will be invoked as a counterweight or to discourage hubris.
The question that emerges; Are much-vaunted egalitarian societies the utopia and
would that be fit for the world we live in today?
About 12 000 years ago during the Neolithic Revolution, hunter-gatherers transitioned to
permanent farming settlements to ensure reliable food supplies. This revolution was fuelled
by climate stabilisation, expanding populations, and the deliberate domestication of plants
and animals. From this shift, hierarchical societies emerged with the formation of complex
ethnic groupings and power struggles for land, especially in geographical constrained regions.
Competition for land resources accentuated command and control structures effective for
initiation of war or the defence of land and resources.
This shift from a nomadic hunter-gatherer existence to farming turned the tide on purist
egalitarianism with astonishing speed and precipitated in the formation of first small
permanent groups to complex chiefdoms by 5000BC.
Subsequently mega-empires emerged, moving humanity away from flat to hierarchical societies, with the latter typified by inequality and dominance by an elite few. This new social dispensation evoked an increase in struggle for power, where political skill generally outweighed physical strength.
Ambitious leaders who might once have run the risk of being ostracised or killed in egalitarian societies, now had greater scope to pursue power and status.
In the early stages of empire formation, struggles for power often claimed more lives than they would have in egalitarian leaning communities. In ancient Roman empire leaders that gave to excesses were assassinated, and when weak or corrupt leaders are allowed to persist, civil order
became the victim.
A hierarchical social contract
As democracy entrenched, checks and balances were introduced, attrition rates in the race to the top declined, and the benefits of hierarchical arrangements evinced.
Peter Turchin in his book Ultrasociety stated: “Hierarchy is like fire. It can be used to
cook food or to burn people. But without it, all the marvels of civilization would be
impossible.”
Competition within a hierarchal society proved to spark innovation and progress
superseding that of egalitarianism. A hierarchical social contract is the only way humans
can effectively cooperate and collaborate in large scale societies, but only when corrupt
leaders can be reined in and held to account.
Successful anti-corruption strategies usually require reforms across multiple areas
simultaneously, strong institutions, transparent governance, professional public
administration, effective prosecution, and an active civil society.
Writing in Good Governance Africa’s flagship publication, Africa in Fact, Nnaemeka Ohamadike states: “The gap between anti-corruption rhetoric and real law enforcement remains a breeding ground for impunity, weakening governance and leaving citizens to bear the cost, especially in Africa.
Factors that aid corruption
Particularly in South Africa, emerging from institutionalised oppression poverty, high inequality polarised along racial lines and exclusions corruption found fertile grounds. South
Africa ticks all the boxes aiding corruption:
Concentration of economic power among elites
Opportunities for wealthy groups to influence policy, and
Incentives for poorer citizens to engage in survival-based corruption.
It would be a fallacy to view corruption as a genetic defect, as something more common in
certain groups, or as a simple response to self-preservation in an unjust global order.
Corruption is better understood as a complex adaptive system rather than merely individual misconduct. Seen in this way, it is not a series of isolated acts by bad actors, but a self-sustaining network of behaviours, incentives, and relationships.
Complex Adaptive Systems are characterised by interconnectedness, non-linear feedback
loops, and emergence, and thus a change in one area can trigger unintended consequences
or adaptations elsewhere.
Key systemic characteristics of corruption include:
Emergent Behaviour: Corrupt systems are rarely designed from the top down but
emerge organically from localized interactions between individuals, bureaucrats, and
private actors circumnavigating complex rules.
Non-Linearity: Small inputs can trigger disproportionate responses. A minor bribe
may eventually evolve into an entrenched, institutionalized culture of patronage.
Adaptability and Resilience: When traditional enforcement tightens, corrupt
networks mutate. They bypass new regulations or co-opt the very institutions
designed to monitor them.
Path Dependency: Historical precedents and past corrupt practices lock systems
into trajectories that become incredibly difficult to disrupt without fundamentally
altering institutional incentives
In his book, Corruptible, Brian Klaas interrogates the conundrum: “Does power corrupt or
are corrupt people drawn to power?” In a follow up article, the dynamics and dimensions of
the relationship between power and corruption will be interrogated through the following
hypotheses developed by Klaas:
Power makes people worse – power corrupts
Power attracts the corruptible We are attracted to bad leaders, and so we tend to give them power
Focussing on the individuals in power is a mistake because it all depends on the
system.
