Corruption is South Africa’s oldest national pastime.

Busts the myth that South African corruption started with Zuma — or even apartheid — and shows that dodgy dealings have been a national pastime for as long as our history has been written down.

Featured rogues include the rotten colonial governor Willem Adriaan van der Stel; the British twaddlers Sir George Yonge and Lord Charles Somerset; Cecil John Rhodes (theft, fraud and war); Oom Paul Kruger’s compromised Volksraads; the Broederbond’s perfect-ten state capture; the apartheid Department of Information’s fake-news peddling; the apartheid state’s Class A drugs scheme; the so-called “independent” homelands; a few murders; plenty of nepotism; and a state president who started out as a Nazi spy.

Every chapter also features at least one brave whistle-blower.