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It has been almost a year since the commission of inquiry into allegations of state capture in South Africa began to hear evidence. Also known as the Zondo Commission, it is headed by Deputy Chief Justice Raymond Zondo, who has listened to 130 days of testimony from more than 80 people. It is to investigate allegations that private commercial interests have captured the government to his advantage.
All the while, echoes of the alleged involvement of former South African President Jacob Zuma have become deafening. Through various testimonies, Zuma has been directly involved with senior officials and ministers, both current and past. In particular, they alleged that Zuma was relying on them to help the Guptas – Zuma's friends accused of capturing the state – and to speed up the signing of a nuclear deal with Russia that would have bankrupted the country. South Africa. In addition, governance failures that resulted in the looting of parastatal organizations were blamed for state capture.
Zuma's turn to testify has arrived. Not only did he deny the existence of the state's capture – he called it a false political tool – he also portrayed himself as an unfortunate victim.
Refusing to engage the concept, he said:
There are people who have done things to others in one form or another, and you can call it under another name, not that big name "state capture".
According to him, he allegedly orchestrated a corruption network that would have diverted South Africa's development project.
The importance that Zuma testifies before the commission should not be underestimated. This will set a precedent that will show that those who abuse power will be held accountable for their actions or that the cycle of impunity will continue, thus reinforcing unfair systems that allow the capture of the state.
Understand the state capture
Originally, the theoretical concept of state capture referred to a form of grand corruption. In the case of South Africa, this can be defined as the formation of a ghost state led by a ruling elite. This ghost state operates within the constitutional state and in parallel formally and informally with it. Its purpose is to reorient state governance, aligning it with the narrow financial or political interests of power elites, to their advantage.
State capture is based on a strategy to align state organs and commercial institutions and enterprises with rent-seeking
The evidence examined by the Commission shows that stakeholders have ensured that all conditions are created and processes aligned to extract more money than the actual cost of goods and services as a means of enriching them.
This reveals the systemic nature of capture by the state. To succeed, we need the close cooperation and complicity of the highest levels of the country to guarantee rents, evade accountability and preserve legitimacy.
The graph below, written by Robyn Foley, senior researcher at the Center for Complex Systems in Transition at the University of Stellenbosch, describes the so-called strategy of capturing public enterprises, installing compliant civil servants, undermining institutions and discredit the critics.
The graph shows a presidency where state capture became unionized within the state and in search of a rent. Capture is radically moving away from the norms and values upon which a developing democratic state depends. Like most liberal democracies, the South African constitution provides for checks and balances to limit these abuses of power. When these controls are undermined and the balancing forces are skewed, the system becomes a reinforcement loop of misbehavior, spiraling toward an authoritarian oligarchic state.
In other words, a silent state coup.
How did we come here?
Zuma has placed his presidency under the sign of state-sponsored development. This was achieved through state-owned public procurement, tighter control of the state, and economic empowerment of blacks to achieve what has been called radical economic transformation.
But it is precisely within the framework of this agenda, and the governance arrangements that supported it, that seeds for state capture have been sown. Closer control of the state meant that information flows were controlled by only a few people, while state-owned enterprises used the bulk of purchases.
Billions of people were already going through these state-owned businesses and the radical economic transformation was the ideal ideology for all concerter.
But black businesses have hardly benefited from the benefits of state capture. If radical economic transformation were to be achieved through the constitutional state, it would be implemented through an economic policy that would support livelihoods and job creation. In addition, the capture of the state emptied the very institutions that would have been able to achieve a radical economic transformation through the constitutional state.
The outcome
Numerous events over the past decade have suggested a slow abuse of state resources. One of the first is the irregular landing of a civilian aircraft at Waterkloof Air Force Base in 2013. The aircraft was carrying foreign guests to a family wedding organized by Zuma's friends, the Gupta family.
Two years later, it was proved that millions of rands of public funds had been used illegally to improve the family estate of Nkandla, then President of the President. These expenses were described in a report prepared by the former Québec Ombudsman, Thuli Madonsela.
The turning point came just a few months after the release of the Protecteur du citoyen's capture report, when Zuma fired Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan and his deputy, Mcebisi Jonas, in March 2017. The Events sent a shockwave in South Africa, sparking many protests and mobilized public outrage, forcing Zuma to launch a thorough investigation into state capture.
Our unpublished research shows that to date, there have been 28 investigations, investigations and public commissions on capture cases. There are also 118 unresolved corruption cases involving government officials and politicians in the bowels of lawyer Shamila Batohi, recently appointed head of the country's National Criminal Prosecution Authority.
The real cost of damage caused by state capture, including the destruction of institutions and human lives, is not quantifiable.
South Africans might be seduced by the prospect of Zuma's Zondo stance. But he was not the only one to lead the state capture project. And the network of actors and influencers is vast and always very active. This was laid bare in a testimony before the commission.
Nina Callaghan, Robyn Foley, senior researcher at the Center for Complex Systems in Transition at the University of Stellenbosch, contributed to the article.
– Mark Swilling is Distinguished Professor of Sustainable Development at University of Stellenbosch.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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