ABSTRACT
Corruption is an umbrella term for activities that are deemed to be inappropriate or improper, not congruent with the expectations applicable to specific roles, contexts or relationships. In Africa, this includes high-level graft, that is, the looting of state coffers by ‘stationary bandits’ (Olson, 1993) such as Omar Bongo Ondimba, who ruled Gabon for 42 years, and is reported to have appropriated 25 per cent of oil-rich Gabon’s GDP (Ghosh, 2013). Corruption also includes cheating by public office bearers, ranging from the mundane everyday bribes, in which the bribee is compensated for creatively interpreting or breaking a rule, to larger-scale buying and dispensing of political favours. Most discussions of corruption in Africa echo Joseph Nye’s widely used definition of corruption as ‘behaviour which deviates from the formal duties of a public role because of private-regarding (personal, close family, private clique) pecuniary or status gains; or violates rules against the exercise of certain types of private-regarding influence’ (Nye, 1967: 419).
