LITERATURBERICHT | REVIEW ARTICLE State Capture in South Africa Ulf Engel Te concept of state capture is not new.1 Already in 2007, the Stockholm-based Inter- national Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA) observed that the “majority of African governing political parties are still heavily dependent on the direct or indirect (the embezzlement of public funds to fnance elections) use or abuse of gov- ernment resources”. In many cases, ruling parties “rely on the state resources to exact patronage in order to maintain the party organization and management”. Tus, “politics itself becomes a means to an end, devoid of any idea of protecting public interests vis-à- vis private gain”.2 1 Review of the following titles: Pieter-Louis Myburgh: The Republic of Gupta. A Story of State Capture. Cape Town: Penguin Random House 2017, 444 pp.; Jacques Pauw: The President’s Keepers: Those Keeping Zuma in Power and Out of Prison. Cape Town: Tafelberg 2017, 423 pp.; Stephan Hofstatter: Licence to Loot. How the plunder of Eskom and other parastatals almost sank South Africa. Cape Town: Penguin Random House2018, xii + 270 pp.; Ivor Chipkin/Mark Swilling et al.: Shadow State. The Politics of State Capture. Johannesburg: Wits University Press 2018, xxvi + 159 pp.; Robin Renwick: How to Steal a Country. State Capture and Hopes for the Future in South Africa. London: Biteback Publishing 2018, xxii + 298 pp.; Pieter-Louis Myburgh: Gangster State. Unravelling Ace Magashule’s Web of Capture. Cape Town: Penguin Random House 2019, 390 pp. 2 All quotes International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance: Political Parties in Africa: Challenges for Sustained Multiparty Democracy, Stockholm 2007, p. 21. A diferent take on state capture was developed a few years earlier within the World Bank by people who observed how companies in post-Cold War transition countries exerted infuence on states. See J. S. Hellman/G. Jones/D. Kaufmann, “Seize the State, Seize the Day”. State Capture, Corruption, and Infuence in Transition. Washington DC, World Bank etc. 2000 (= Policy Research Working Paper; 2444). Comparativ | Zeitschrift für Globalgeschichte und vergleichende Gesellschaftsforschung 31 (2021) Heft 2, S. 267–274. DOI: 10.26014/j.comp.2021.02.10 268 | Ulf Engel South Africa is no stranger to this dynamic. Under Apartheid, corruption was rife, both in the European settler dominated polity, but also in the so-called “Black Homelands”. With the transition to a post-apartheid political order during 1989 to 1994, many peo- ple were hoping in vain for the creation of a less corrupt society. Since April 1994 the African National Congress (ANC) is in power now, confrmed in six consecutive general elections. Te former liberation movement still enjoys an absolute majority of votes, although in recent years the number of eligible voters who have given up participating in elections has outgrown support for the ANC. Te country has become a dominant-party state with rapidly declining levels of popular support.3 In particular under President Jacob G. Zuma, who was at the helm of both government and party from 2009 to 2018, South Africa has seen unprecedented levels of corrup- tion – Zuma, his ANC faction and networks of businessmen have perfected the art of state capture. At the heart of this state looting conspiracy were three brothers of Indian descent who had migrated to the county in 1993: Ajay, Atul, and Rajesh “Tony” Gupta. Operating from their fancy compound in 1 Saxonwold Drive, Johannesburg, they be- came the string-pullers of much of the state capture under Zuma – they bank-rolled the president and his family, they efectively decided on cabinet appointments (such as the minister of fnance), and they were allowed to massively enrich themselves through state tenders issued by an array of parastatals, or state-owned enterprises (SOEs). Part of this happened in broad daylight under the watchful eyes of constitutional Chapter 9 institu- tions (“State institutions supporting constitutional democracy”).4 Te current government of M. Cyril Ramaphosa – he took over as state president in Feb- ruary 2018 (and already had succeeded Zuma as chief of the ANC in December 2017) – is trying hard to drain the swamp of corruption. But at the same time, it is heavily rely- ing on political support from corrupt ANC cadres and factions around former president Zuma and ANC secretary-general Elias Sekgobelo “Ace” Magashule. To investigate the extent of state capture, in August 2018 Ramaphosa appointed a Commission of Inquiry into Allegations of State Capture, Corruption and Fraud, led by deputy Chief Justice Ray- mond Zondo. Te commission has called on many witnesses and suspects to look into the looting of parastatals in transport (Prasa, Transnet, and the national carrier SAA), 3 See Roger Southall, The South African elections of 1994: The remaking of a dominant-party state, in: Journal of Modern African Studies 32 (1994) 4, pp. 629–655; and, by the same author, The “dominant party debate” in South Africa, in: Africa Spectrum 40 (2005) 1, pp. 61–82. 4 Rampant corruption has been detailed by Public Protector Thuli Madonsela who was head of the ombudsmen- like investigation authority from 2009 to 2016, before she had to give way to a successor, Busisiwe Mkhwebane, who has become an instrument of Zuma’s to fght his enemies and favour his allies. See Madonsela’s two deva- stating reports, Public Protector: Secure in Comfort: Report on an Investigation into Allegations of Impropriety and Unethical Conduct Relating to the Installation and Implementation of Security Measures by the Department of Public Works at and in Respect of the Private Residence of President Jacob Zuma at Nkandla in the KwaZulu- Natal Province. Pretoria 2014 (= Report No. 25 of 2013/2014); and Public Protector: Capture of the State. Report on an investigation into alleged improper and unethical conduct by the President and other state functionaries relating to alleged improper relationships and involvement of the Gupta family in the removal and appointment of Ministers and Directors of State-Owned Enterprises resulting in improper and possibly corrupt award of state contracts and benefts to the Gupta family’s businesses. Pretoria 2017 (= Report No. 6 of 2016/2017). State Capture in South Africa | 269 electricity (Eskom), and the prison system (Bosasa). Since 2020 evidence produced be- fore the commission is directly admissible in a court of justice. Some four years ago, a handful of investigative journalists started shedding light on the details of the ANC’s state capture. Teir work has been instrumental in exposing wide- spread corrupt practices. Tey laid the groundwork for today’s coverage by the country’s quality press on evolving court cases and the evasive acts of the main culprits. With two exceptions (written by a non-South African observer and South African academics, re- spectively), the books reviewed here stand testament to a great tradition in South Africa’s liberal press which precedes the end of Apartheid. Presently, this tradition is contin- ued, among others, by the amaBhungane Centre for Investigative Journalism.5 Partly, the books under review here tend to overemphasize the “positive” role Ramaphosa has played or can play – given the fact that he has been part of the ANC machinery right from the beginning (he was secretary-general under Nelson Mandela, 1991–1997, and has served as deputy president under Zuma since 2014). Pieter-Louis Myburgh, Te Republic of Gupta. A Story of State Capture (2017) Te author is a University of Stellenbosch graduate and award-winning investigative journalist who started his career at the Afrikaans Beeld newspaper in Johannesburg. Later he worked with the weekly newspaper Rapport, before moving on to News24, an online news publication. Myburgh is well-known for exposing in 2015 a corrupt multibillion- rand contract for new locomotives at the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (Prasa). Published in April 2017, the book is one of the frst detailed accounts of the extend of state capture in South Africa. Te role of the notorious Gupta family has played in the Zuma shadow state takes centre stage in this book. Although already operating in the country for quite some time, the Gupta family’s activities only made it to the head- lines at the beginning of 2016 when Mcebisi Jonas, a former deputy minister of fnance (2014–2016), disclosed how the Guptas ofered him a substantial amount of money and the job of minister of fnance in October if only he followed their own agenda (for many years the portfolio had been under Pravin Gordhan who strongly opposed state capture practices within the ANC but had to leave in May 2014, only to step in again in December 2015 after Zuma had appointed one of his cronies to head the ministry who then only lasted in ofce for four days – meanwhile international trust in to the country’s economy and its management plummeted). But Myburgh’s story starts far earlier, sometime in 1995, when the frst contacts between the Gupta and the Zuma families developed. Te strength of his account is the detailed analysis of how the Guptas managed to weave a web which ensnared Zuma and his sons, in particular Edward and Duduzane. Allegedly Atul Gupta started paying the school fees for some of Zuma’s sons – at a time when Zuma was not yet the big men he was to be- come (i.e., before he was elected deputy president of the ANC in December 1997). My- bergh suggests that the Guptas were already making inroads into South African politics 5 https://amabhungane.org (accessed: 24 March 2021). 270 | Ulf Engel in 1996 under President Tabo M. Mbeki when Ajay became a member of an advisory council to the president.