contract was actually taken up.

Similarly in contracts for road making, repairing, and making streets,
etc., etc. On one occasion a rather highly placed official obtained a
contract for repairing certain streets in Pretoria for £60,000. The work
being worth £20,000 at most, the difference went to be shared by the
several official participants.

One of the first instances of glaring peculation occurred about fifteen
years ago in relation with the Selati railway contract obtained by Baron
Oppenheim.[4] The procedure was publicly stigmatized as bribery. It had
transpired that nearly all the Volksraad's members had received gifts in
cash and values ranging each from £50 to £1,000 prior to voting the
contract, but what was paid after voting did not become public at the
time of exposure.

The acceptance of those gifts was ultimately admitted, in the face of
evidence adduced in a certain law case; denial became, in fact,
impossible. The plea of exoneration was that those gifts had been freely
accepted without pledging the vote. The President publicly exculpated
the honourable members, expressing his conviction that none of them
could have meant to prejudice the State in their votes for the contract;
and as there had been no pledge on their part, the donor had actually
incurred the risk of missing his object. From that time the practice of
obtaining and selling concessions or of sinecures and other lucrative
advantages grew quite into a trade; and receiving douceurs became a
hankering passion from highest to lowest, but happily with not a few
exceptions where the official's honour was above being priced.

There was nothing shocking in all this venality to the bulk of the