**5. Corruption: the drivers**

The key driver of corruption is greedy, wherein a person, a group or an institution seeks to secure something of value using immoral and unethical means. In corrupt activities, there is almost always an aspect of selfishness at the expense of the rest of those who will, one way or the other, brush with the immediate, delayed or long-term devastating consequences of the corrupt activity. The quintessence of a driver is that it is a condition inherent or induced in the psychological or biological making of a person that pushes or pulls the person to commit a dishonest, unethical, immoral, illegal and unduly self-aggrandising act. The innocent and benign desire to be a doctor, or a rich entrepreneur does not qualify as corruption, we are all driven by some (intense) desire to achieve something. In corruption, the means of achieving that which drive us is (intense) selfishness. There are two psychological states that generally hook with corruption, particularly under the contexts of systemic corruption: a state of cognitive dissonance, when a person/institution is very conscious that what they are doing is corrupt and causing suffering to their targets/victims, but they do not stop doing that wrongful and selfish act. For instance, dumping waste near slums and informal settlements on the argument that you are doing those people a favour because among them the 'poor but entrepreneurial' will come up to the dumps, retrieve recyclables and make money. We are aware of the diseases that can be contracted from the dumps and the danger of hungry kids walking in search of edibles. On a moral analysis, a benefit-against-cost analysis this act has no better description than 'corruption'. When corruption takes root we get those persons who will grow the psychology that they are entitled to payment for whatever they are doing for you. For instance, a government worker issuing birth certificates. They can tighten up the process so that they create discomfiture in getting a birth certificate. The discomfort may be in the form of slow services, with long disappearances in the other rooms. Those in a hurry will start offering a bribe to quicken up the worker. Then, the next one in a hurry does the same of giving a bribe until it becomes a norm, a standard and a culture. Those not in hurry can afford to wait, and it is 'okay' to be served after the 'dirty' of those with money to bribe is done. With repetition, there is normalisation, standardisation and acculturation of the bribing. The corruptor (worker) gets it in her/his psychology that (s)he must be paid to issue the birth certificate, now it does not matter whether you are in a hurry or not—birth certificate for a bribe. Psychological entitlement in this case is when the corruptor feels they are entitled to something, for example, a bribe before they can do what they are already paid to do.
