- Corruption begins with small acts of silence and justification, not sudden criminal intent.
- Social pressure, comfort, and mimetic desire gradually normalise unethical behaviour.
- Recovery requires accountability, consequence, and sustained public memory.
Like many South Africans, I have been glued to the Madlanga Commission hearings. Day after day, we hear of police generals on criminal payrolls, whistleblowers killed, and a system that seems able to pull everyone in. As we like to say, South Africa is a movie.
I needed a break, so I switched on Netflix and watched Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man. In one scene, a seasoned man who has long made his peace with darkness says to a younger one, “Deeper and deeper you walk into the blood until you are out of your depth, and then you must learn to swim in it.” The line stopped me. I reached for the remote and sat with it, because I had heard that story before, not in Birmingham, not in 1914, but here and now.
That line captures, with brutal clarity, how corruption works. It is rarely one grand leap. It is usually a progression that begins in the shallows, moves into deeper water, and ends with learning to survive in what should once have horrified you.
The descent into the shallows
The shallows are where it starts, a small favour, a silence, a signature. Evil does not usually arrive as a monster; it arrives as a colleague asking for help, a manager suggesting you look the other way, or a form that just needs approval. No one wakes up and decides to become a criminal. People begin by telling themselves they are still clean, still in control, still able to step away.
There are always pressures that make that first compromise easier; a family to feed, a bond to pay, a position that was hard won and feels impossible to risk. The first act is rarely theft. It is silence, looking away, saying nothing, and not asking the question you know should be asked. That is where the water first reaches your ankles, and you hardly notice it.
But the water does not stay shallow. It rises, and you are no longer only protecting yourself; you are part of something. Obligation replaces choice, and comfort starts doing its work. Life gets softer, you can afford things that were once out of reach, and in a hard country, your life becomes noticeably easier. It becomes easy to tell yourself that you deserve it, that you worked hard and took risks.
When corruption becomes normal
Then comes what psychologists call mimetic desire. We begin to want what we see others have, copying each other’s appetites. Social media amplifies this, turning the outfit, the car, the holiday, and the lifestyle into signals of success. In that world, corruption can become aspirational, especially when it is displayed without consequence.
You start drawing others in, colleagues, friends, family, people who might otherwise question you. Share a little benefit, and their voice grows quieter. The circle closes, the water rises, and soon you are out of your depth with no shore in sight.
That is when moral disengagement takes over. People silence their conscience with phrases like, “everyone does it,” “I am just following orders,” and “If I do not do it, someone worse will.” Loyalty to the network becomes the only virtue, and betrayal becomes the only sin. You look in the mirror and still see a decent person, someone doing what is necessary.
In South Africa, this stage is made easier by the revolving door. Someone leaves one post under a cloud and reappears later in another, sometimes with more power and a bigger budget. The lesson to everyone watching is simple: there are no real consequences. Crime stops feeling shocking and starts feeling logical.
That is the deepest horror of it. The blood has a current.
Swimming against the current
You see it in the people who testify. They are still alive, still salaried, still visible, but something in them has already drowned, ukufa kwengqondo, ukufa komuntu, ukufa kwesizwe.
Not everyone who enters this world begins with greed. Some begin with fear, fear of losing a job, losing status, or failing the people who depend on them. That matters because it shows that corruption does not only recruit the hungry, it recruits the anxious, the ambitious, the compromised, and the tired. The first betrayal is often not of the public, but of the self.
Can people bail themselves out? Sometimes, but only at great cost. To turn state witness, to bring evidence, and to break the code of silence is to swim against a powerful current. In South Africa, whistleblowers have paid with their lives. That is why their courage matters, because it reminds us that even in dirty water, moral choice is still possible.
For a country, the way out is slower. It requires prosecutions that mean something, asset recovery that is visible, and a public that refuses to forget. If people can sink into wrongdoing step by step, then a society can also recover step by step through law, memory, and consequence.
The question South Africa must answer, through this Commission and beyond, is whether we are finally learning to swim against the current, or whether we are only becoming more skilled at surviving in it.
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