I live in Norway. The ordinary man in the street thinks ... "corruption, that's something to be found in countries like Russia". It's a dangerous sentiment, most people wouldn't believe that corruption takes place also in Norway, but I do believe it's a serious problem.
The most obvious forms of of corruption - some government representative (be it a low-level police man or a top-level politician in the government) openly asking for a bribe, or some person openly trying to pay money for a favorable treatment ... that's pretty unheard of, almost impossible here - but corruption comes in many forms; I believe it's often a kind of "I scratch your back and you scratch mine"-sentimentality. Sometimes you'll see some former politician or bureaucrat getting a well-paid job at some company that formerly got favorable treatment by said person. Corruption or not? It can be pretty difficult to prove that corruption has found place.
I would love to live in a country where the police cannot openly ask for a bribe and I agree that it will be very difficult to get away from corruption as a whole. There will always be the "bad" part of humankind that will find ways to be corrupt.
South Africa is however very far from being a corruption free country. The government is the most corrupt of all. I have never been a racist. Not even in the old government where apartheid was the rulers. For me it was always that the best person for the job, must get the job. I do not believe that I will even see a change away from the corrupt government in my lifetime.