for discussing political developments in South Africa in the past ten years and the civil society response to it. The ANC government under Jacob Zuma became more and more tyrannical as it set itself up against the Constitution and the rule of law in an effort to capture the state.
In moves reminiscent of events in the 1980s, independent journalists, social movements, trade unions, legal aid centres, NGOs, the churches and some academics have helped mobilise South African society against state capture. A new and varied movement has arisen, bringing together awkward partnerships between ideologically disparate groups and people. What they have nonetheless shared is a broad support for the Constitution, for democracy and for a modern, professional administration, and they are all, broadly speaking, social democratic in orientation.
The publication of the Betrayal of the Promise report, on which this book is based, constituted a key moment, helping to provide this movement with a narrative and concepts for expressing a systemic perspective on state capture that helped its readers to, in the words of former Minister of Finance Pravin Gordhan, ‘join the dots’.1
The particular instance of so-called ‘state capture’ that we discuss in this book is part of a familiar and recurring pattern in the history of state formation in South Africa. It is, in fact, impossible to understand the evolution of South African politics and statecraft without understanding the deeper dynamics of what we refer to today as state capture. There is a clear and direct line of sight from the origins of the state in the Cape Colony, when it was ‘captured’ by the Dutch East India Company, through to the era of Cecil Rhodes and ‘Milner’s Kindergarten’ – the name popularly given to the young British civil servants who served under High Commissioner Alfred, Lord Milner – in post-Boer War South Africa.
The world that the first generations of mining magnates, the so-called Randlords, built on the Witwatersrand provided the foundation for the election victory of the National Party in 1948. The post-1948 state actively supported the build-up of Afrikaner capital in a process which effectively captured the state for decades, with the Electricity Supply Commission (Escom, now renamed Eskom) and the South African Railways (now renamed Transnet) at the very centre of that political project.
The corporate capture of the apartheid war- and sanctions-busting machine has been well documented, with arms manufacturer Armscor (renamed Denel after 1994) at its centre. Also well documented is the powerful role played by corporate South Africa during the transition, to ensure that a democratic state could do little to change the basic structure of the economy. This was a form of capture in that powerful elite interests subverted the broad vision of transformation that inspired the mass democratic movement that had brought down the apartheid state.
The most recent instance of state capture has galvanised a broad-based coalition of forces that share a commitment to building an uncaptured South African state. This is what our Constitution envisages. The choice must not be between different forms of capture, it must be between capture and no capture. In taking this stand we are going up against the defeatist view on both the left and right that ‘the state is always captured, so why the fuss?’
By focusing on this latest instance of state capture we hope to reinforce the movement for a democratic, uncaptured state, thereby ensuring that South Africans will in future regard all forms of state capture as totally unacceptable. Indeed, in our view, this is a precondition for inclusive development, despite the fact that there are very few examples of large-scale redistribution of wealth taking place within a democratic framework.
Turning against the Constitution
From about 2010 the South African government started to introduce measures to control the diffusion of information and tacitly regulate the press. In 2011, in the face of impressive opposition, a majority of members of Parliament representing the ruling ANC voted to pass the Protection of State Information Bill, which was especially controversial for giving government officials the right to classify as ‘top secret’ any government information deemed to be in the ‘national interest’.
As activists from the Right2Know Campaign argued over and over again, the definition of the ‘national interest’ in the Bill was so broad as to exclude virtually nothing from censorship.2 The Bill also criminalised ‘whistleblowing’ and investigative journalism by imposing heavy jail sentences on anybody holding ‘classified’ information. This resonated with the findings of a 2008 Ministerial Review Commission on Intelligence which had found that the mandate of the South African intelligence services was so broadly defined that ordinary democratic activity could be construed as a national security threat.3
Eventually, President Jacob Zuma refused to assent to the legislation, halting its passage into law, on the basis that it would fail at the Constitutional Court. It was, nonetheless, symptomatic of a wider trend.
During this period there were concerted efforts to create alternative media platforms more sympathetic to the ANC government. In this regard, a daily newspaper, The New Age, was launched in 2010. Owned by the controversial Gupta family (whose activities are discussed in detail in Chapter 4), it has an explicit mandate to present a positive image of the ANC. Today it claims that it provides positive news that is critically constructive. In 2013 the Guptas launched a 24-hour news channel, ANN7, with the same purpose. More recently, as the Zuma administration came under increasing pressure (see below), ANN7 became a more brazenly propaganda channel.
The South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC), the country’s public broadcaster, has an impressive reach. Public radio is the primary source of news and information for the vast majority of South Africans. In 2011 Hlaudi Motsoeneng, who had been employed at the SABC since 1995, was appointed acting SABC chief operating officer. In 2014 the public protector, an institution established in terms of Chapter 9 of South Africa’s Constitution to protect the rights of citizens against abuses by government, found that Motsoeneng had been illegally appointed. He had never finished school and was thus ineligible in terms of the criteria for the post. This notwithstanding, then Communications Minister Faith Muthambi approved his appointment in July 2014. Even after several courts confirmed the finding of the public protector, the executive of the SABC stood by Motsoeneng and when his appointment was finally set aside by the Supreme Court of Appeal, in September 2016, Muthambi intervened to secure him a senior, acting post.
It was not difficult to understand why. Under Motsoeneng the SABC had moved, effectively, to prohibit the reporting of news that was critical of government or was potentially embarrassing. The shift towards a more politicised newsroom at the SABC had started during the Thabo Mbeki administration when the then head of news, Snuki Zikalala, had blacklisted several political commentators who were critical of the government. What happened under Motsoeneng, however, looked more like ‘institutional capture’. The policy of the organisation was illegally changed to remove editorial discretion from senior journalists and to grant it instead to the chief operating officer, that is, to Motsoeneng himself. Critical or independent journalists were purged from the organisation.
These events took place in the context of an audacious political project unfolding in other parts of the state as well.
In December 2007, in Polokwane, a provincial town about three hours’ drive north of Johannesburg, accumulating tensions within the ruling ANC burst into the open. During the 52nd National Conference of the party Thabo Mbeki failed in his bid to secure a third term as the organisation’s president. Jacob Zuma was elected in his stead, coming to power on a wave of resentment of and grievances against the previous administration – not least for allegedly conspiring to destroy Zuma’s political career. In September 2008 the ANC ‘recalled’ Mbeki from his position as South Africa’s president. The national election that followed in 2009 saw Jacob Zuma become president of the country as well as of the ANC.
The Polokwane revolt in the ANC was informed by a conviction that economic transformation as pursued during the Mandela and Mbeki eras had produced an anomaly, if not a perversion: a small black elite beholden to white corporate elites, a vulnerable and over-indebted black middle class and a large African majority condemned to unemployment and dependent on welfare handouts to survive. The economic policies of the Mbeki