Understanding Political and Bureaucratic Corruption in South African Politics: A Case Study of President Zuma’s First Term

Submitted: 25 September 2024
Accepted: 10 February 2025

DOI: https://doi.org/10.70139/rolacc.2025.1.3

Mxolisi Bongumusa Cebekhulu
University of Zululand, South Africa

Mthandeni Patric Mbatha
University of Zululand, South Africa (Corresponding author)
mbathamthandeni@gmail.com

ABSTRACT
The topic of corruption is at the centre of the South African political debate at the current moment. It is an ever-green subject that has received much attention from South African scholars. Many researchers make a number of suggestions when evaluating the issue of corruption in South Africa, the principal suggestion is that the government of the dominant party encourage corruption. The constitutional measures to constrain corruption in South Africa have now and again been under scrutiny. It may be the case because since the regaining of political independence corruption has been increasing. Therefore, what motivates this study is the desire to assess whether corruption levels have changed under President Zuma’s first term. Using a qualitative perspective to the research which, among other things, involves examining, analysing, and interpreting various secondary data, this study focuses on analysing the causes of corruption and evaluating its consequences under Zuma’s administration. To achieve these objectives, this paper investigates cases of political corruption in South Africa under President Zuma’s administration to establish the damaging effects of political corruption as well as the effectiveness of government measures to deal with such cases.

 Keywords
Corruption; state capture; Zuma administration; Zondo commission

© 2025 Cebekhulu and Mbatha, licensee LU Press. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution license CC BY 4.0, which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Cite this article as: Cebekhulu, M. B., and Mbatha, M. P. Understanding Political and Bureaucratic Corruption in South African Politics: A Case Study of President Zuma’s First Term, Rule of Law and Anti-Corruption Center Journal, 2025:1, https://doi.org/10.70139/rolacc.2025.1.3

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