Bribery is bad, or it is until the moment you need to grease a palm to avoid another traffic ticket.

Does anybody actually pay those things? Asking for a friend.

Anyway the fact remains that us South Africans know a thing or two about bribes, be it taking them or giving them.

The Ethics Institute, an independent public institute that offers a range of ethics-related services and products, have completed their third annual South African Citizens’ Bribery Survey.

Before we check those results, a little intro from the Institute:

We started conducting the Citizens’ Bribery Survey in 2015 with the aim of better understanding the bribery challenges that ordinary South Africans face on a daily basis, their beliefs about bribery, and the socio-economic factors that influence bribery. This is the third consecutive year that we have conducted the survey.

The full survey results are available HERE, but at a glance let’s see what stands out:

That’s a whole lot of bribes, my friends.

For those interested in the demographic of the study, enjoy:

A little more info on the average bribe:

The average bribe amount mentioned was R1 548. This is quite a bit lower than the R2 201 average of last year, and even below the R2 005 of 2015. This could be reflective of the high incidence of traffic bribes, which, as indicated in the Bribe value per type graph, has the lowest bribe value.

Never change, traffic officers.

There are plenty more of those in-depth observations in the full report, so if you want to know how greasy our palms really are check that out HERE.

[source:tei]