Don’t you hate it when a R200 note slips out of your pocket, at the exact time that the traffic cop examines your overdue car licence disc?

South Africans have made a habit of bribing our way out of trouble in years gone by (our 2018 bribe stats make for interesting reading), and that is going to be a hard habit to break.

Still, it is noteworthy that a taxi driver has been jailed for six months for attempting to bribe an officer, with the Road Traffic Management Corporation (RTMC) speaking of a concerted effort to crack down on this form of corruption.

IOL reporting below:

Thabani Nqakula was arrested by members of the national traffic police (NTP) in January this year.

“He was stopped for driving an un-roadworthy vehicle on a public road. He offered the officers a R200 bribe to avoid receiving a traffic fine. He was arrested immediately and charged with bribery,” said the RTMC.

Nqakula was sentenced to six months’ imprisonment or a R3000 fine. He was further given a three-year sentence suspended for five years…

“This conviction will send a message to motorists that they can no longer break traffic laws with impunity. Our traffic officers are no longer prepared to have their good names tarnished by motorists who are not prepared to obey the rules of the road,” said RTMC CEO, Advocate Makhosini Msibi.

OK, but who’s going to buy the traffic officers lunch now?

Since the turn of the year, the NTP says it has arrested 50 motorists for offering bribes, with those cases in various stages of court proceedings, so it’s not an isolated incident, either.

Msibi is clearly sticking his neck out on this one, calling for traffic officers to show “zero tolerance to anyone who attempted to corrupt them”.

For many, forking out to avoid that fine is par for the course, but academics point out that this is a slippery slope. Here’s BusinessTech:

Associate professor at Wits University’s School of Governance, William Gumede, previously warned that corruption is becoming so widespread in South Africa that there is a danger of it becoming viewed as normal.

“Once it becomes normalised in society, it will be almost impossible to eradicate it,” he said.

Corruption becomes institutionalised when public officials do not follow the rules set down in a country’s constitution and legislation – and when citizens choose to adopt and exploit it.

“South Africa is in a real danger of following the same pattern where corruption becomes institutionalised,” Gumede said.

Given what we’ve seen with the looting of VBS Bank, and State Capture, and Eskom, and just about anything else involving our government, I would say we are well past that point.

Then again, there’s a big difference between selling your country down the river and offering to buy your local traffic officer a bite to eat.