ABSTRACT
Many South Africans think that political corruption is prevalent in their government. Corruption's more benign effects in pre-1994 South Africa also include the diversion of secret defence funding from lethal official projects into comparatively harmless private peccadilloes. In a more subtle vein, the extent of corruption among apartheid's bureaucrats may have helped to reconcile them to political change, especially when their jobs were guaranteed in the news dispensation. Despite the apparent structural constraints, corruption appeared to flourish in pre-democratic South African public administration. Of course, it is arguable that a bureaucracy which was deliberately used as an instrument to foster the social and economic fortunes of one ethnically defined group had at least a form of transactive corruption built into its functioning from the inception of National Party rule. In an African context, South Africa is unusual for the depth and experience of its administrative and political institutions and the degree of separation between them.
