WINDHOEK – Namibia has been ranked at 55 percent, which is just below the 56 percent average, in the ratings of how African countries handled the fight against corruption between 2011 and 2013, by the Afrobarometer released yesterday in Dakar, Senegal.
On the index for perception of corruption Namibia is rated lower on the scale of the perception index, fourth from the bottom, along with Cape Verde, Algeria and Mauritius. The corruption perceptions in Africa are based on interviews with more than 51 000 African people in 34 African countries making it the biggest survey of people’s experiences and views of corruption in Africa.
The latest Afrobarometer surveys found that almost one in five people have paid a bribe one or more times to a government official in the past year in order to get an official document or permit. Paying a bribe to get medical treatment as well as avoid a problem with the police were the other two most cited reasons. In the past year the figure for those who have paid a bribe was nearly one in three Africans.
The report says 56 percent of people said their governments have done a “fair” or “very bad” job of fighting corruption, while just 35 percent say their governments have done “fairly” or “very well”. For the 16 countries surveyed since 2002, negative ratings have increased from 46 percent to 54 percent with only five countries showing a decline in these negative ratings over the last decade.
“The negative ratings surface despite the fact that eradicating corruption and improving governance in Africa have been priorities for most major international organizations and many political leaders since the mid-1990s,” says the report. Across the 34 countries, perceptions of corruption are highest for the police, followed by government officials and tax officials.
Experience of poverty is also linked to higher perceived levels of corruption, especially in the justice sector. Almost half the people who go without enough food to eat one or more times a year rate “most” or “all” of the police to be corrupt, compared to 39 percent among those who never go without food, and 31 percent of the poorest perceive judges and magistrates to be corrupt, compared to 24 percent among better off citizens.
“Perceptions that officials are corrupt are linked to dissatisfaction with democracy. For example, only 36 percent of those who perceive high levels of corruption in the office of the presidency are satisfied with democracy. Sixty-six percent of those who think that none of the officials in the office of the presidency are corrupt express satisfaction with democracy,” said the report.
By Desie Heita