**2. Corruption: the slippery concept**

A definition of corruption is difficult to construct and universalise because of variable perceptions of what constitutes an unacceptable and selfish act across geographical space and across cultures and longitudinally over time. To help my argument, I will take you to these search results over the Internet, which is a global phenomenon. A search on the meaning of corruption raised the following:


I further looked for synonyms of corruption using the following constructs: immorality, lustful behaviour, distortion, vice and misrepresentation. The Internet gave the following:


I will end here otherwise I could show other results from other sources. The search results communicate to us that there are different ways of seeing, assessing and reacting to the same thing (corruption) depending on time and space and moods. Effectively we can say the quintessence of corruption is historically conditioned in space and time. What remains as core to a conceptualisation of corruption is the selfishness, the selfaggrandisement and undesirability of the deed and the undesirable consequences of corruption on the innocent person(s). If a hard, cut-and-dried definition of corruption is not achievable, we can still read through and accept the characterisation of corruption as a false, absurd, distorted (mis)representation of something, an act of immorality or sacrilege, unacceptable and abnormal lustful behaviour driven by greed and selfishness.
