What is state capture? Is it a capture of all three arms of the State? If so, or even if it’s just a capture of one arm of the State, how is this effected? Is it by way of a bribe or by foreclosing stories? Perhaps it’s both. But in this commentary, I’m concerned with the story, or discourse, that underpins ‘state capture’ in South Africa.
Just over a year ago, on the 25th of January 2018, the government gazetted the Terms of Reference (TOR) into the Commission of Enquiry into State Capture. Then President Jacob Zuma was compelled to institute an inquiry into ‘allegations of state capture, corruption, and fraud in the public sector including organs of State.’
The backdrop to all of this was former Public Protector, Thuli Madonsela’s, State of Capture report which investigated the seemingly corrupt relationship between then-President Jacob Zuma and the Gupta family, and the compromised role that state institutions and strategic persons played in that relationship. To be fair, this report was a culmination of public and ‘insider’ outrage against that relationship. However, because she did not have the time to complete a thorough investigation, one of the recommendations of the report was that a commission be instituted to investigate the phenomenon of ‘state capture’.
Since the State Capture Commission began, South Africans have been enthralled with all manner of revelations concerning corrupt relationships between those inside and those outside the State. Of course, in the Gramscian sense, the ‘State’ is a ubiquitous entity. And to this extent, the work of the Commission is quintessentially in the public interest.
But what form did the public interest story take in the public domain?
On this issue, there was initially a story that focused on the relationship between the Gupta financial interests and the then President, Jacob Zuma, as the masterminds behind the problem of state capture. So much so that anybody who had met with the Gupta family was guilty in the public eye – of course, except for Pravin Gordan, who, unlike Nhlanhla Nene, carried on virtually unscathed. To be fair, during the course of the Commission, a number of ANC senior members, sympathizers, and supporters alike were implicated or accused. But what was clear is that somehow the Gupta enterprises did not neatly fit into the idea of a private market outfit given their partisan business ethics: the Gupta leaks made this possible.
This is indicative of the power that media holds over what constitutes public ethics in the public political imagination.
Two events changed this story, however
The first is that the VBS saga, implicating the EFF, although by some strange javelin throwing given the limits of the South African Reserve Bank (SARB) investigation, brought the opposition party within the story of state capture. Secondly, the testimony of Angelo Agrizzi against Bosasa and its CEO, Gavin Watson, was a shock to the public. More so when at some point, the Western Cape government was implicated in the machinations of Bosasa, a base of the official opposition, the DA.
What these two events did was to indicate a systemic crisis of the South African political economy. For instance, these events widened the State Capture story to include private sector proper. This was not difficult to connect given the already widespread citizen grievance against South African banks, cell phone data costs and the KPMG saga that followed after the SARS debacle. Let’s not forget the racial profiling concerning home loans. To be sure, public memory reminds us that these come off the back of long-held collusive practices in the private sector: the Tyre industry, the construction sector, the bread cartel and most recently the fixing of the rand by South African banks all come to mind.
Accordingly, it became publicly evident that companies that were non-partisan, that were managed by a skilled cohort of profit-motivated employees, tended to exploit, collude and discriminate. And the public traction of ‘White Monopoly Capital (WMC) ensured that these instances constituted, in the public political imagination, at least, a structural defect in the supposedly ‘pristine’ efficacy of the private sector.
However, the Thuma mina story interrupted this momentum: the then emerging pattern of an equally corrupt private sector, especially with the pension funds lost in the Markus Jooste fall out, is fast fading. What has happened is that the private sector has been given a lifeline under President Ramaphosa. And this is evident in the private sector calls to privatize Eskom. In those calls, it is as if the profit motive provides a moral guarantee against corruption and mismanagement. Of course, this is self-serving advice given who’s making these calls. But part of the problem here is that there hasn’t been any sustained citizen mobilization against private sector issues. Bar the please call me intervention by Gauteng MEC for Education, Lesufi Panyaza, there is political demobilization around private sector exploitation and collusion.
It is no accident that ANC NEC member, Senzo Mchunu, recently blamed black professional for the crisis at Eskom. In fact, in conversations on a turnaround strategy of a number of State-owned Enterprises (SOE), there are murmurs that black corruption can only be turned around by the redemptive ethic of white excellence. This is not surprising or new, however. In 2006, ANC NEC member and Finance Minister, Tito Mboweni’s criticized what he perceived to be the unsustainability of black professional’s appetite for more pay and so not worth training, while, on the other hand, expressing his preference for Afrikaner workers.
What does this have to do with the stories that underpin ‘state capture’ in SA? Well, the arguments levelled here is that while the state capture story changed over time, a development which threatened fractions of capital and their political associates, this was interrupted by the Thuma mina corporatist impetus. We are in the throes of a new story. In any case, stories are, by their nature, foreclosing instruments meant to rule out or prevent certain forms of thinking and acting. In this context, it becomes instructive to refer back to my July 2018 commentary. In it I argued that the Thuma mina phenomenon is underwritten by a ‘disarticulated relationship between economic development and racism (and sexism)’. Perhaps history will prove me wrong.