ABSTRACT
In Southern Africa, the “new South Africa” has been responsible for placing accountability and transparency in both government and the commercial world on the regional agenda, partly in recognition that both corruption and economic crime are serious obstacles in the path of democratic socio-economic development. Within Southern Africa one of the problems in making any general statements about patterns of corruption and economic crime is that the region consists of countries with very different political and socio-economic conditions. It can be demonstrated that although post-election South Africa has meant the arrival of external markets with the relaxing of trade barriers and the development of a more open economy, one downside of this new entrepreneurial spirit is corruption, crime syndicates, dishonesty, embezzlement, and bribery. Economic crime has become a big and lucrative business in South Africa. There is a paucity of accurate and reliable information on commercial corruption in Southern Africa.
