The idea of using government policy to create a sympathetic class of business has failed, and has left a legacy in which the capture of the state has become the motivator for accumulation by interest groups. When the ANC policies under Mbeki created a community of BEE beneficiaries awash with money and eager for further accumulation, it became clear that for this process of accumulation to be intensified, it was necessary that the state be under the control of ANC policy-makers who would then set new targets. The first generation of BEE beneficiaries showcased that it is possible to accumulate through capturing the state bureaucracy and then redistributing resources in line with desired goals. The appetite for this pattern of accumulation, as generated from the Mbeki era onwards, also brought with it the realisation that state capture is a powerful political ideal.
‘State capture’ is a euphemism to describe a situation in which the narratives, the direction and the value system of a society, including patterns of accumulation, are under the control of an elite group. A World Bank discussion document defines it as ‘[t]he efforts of a small number of firms (or such groups as the military, ethnic groups and kleptocratic politicians) to shape the rules of the game to their advantage throgh illicit, non-transparent provision of private gains to public officials’.8
The ANC’s policy of BEE under Mbeki was carried out in a way that sought to exert control on the state, its value system and its grand narratives. One cannot just accumulate and push for a project such as this without adopting the necessary narrative through which such projects are justifiable and defensible in the eyes of ordinary people. For the political elites to continue to have a chance to wrest control of the state and its narratives, they also need a strong entry narrative to open the way for their initiatives. Transformation is a legitimate objective, and transformation of the private sector into black hands is a more specific way of going about this. The rhetoric of transformation was amplified by ANC policy thinking under Mbeki. Transformation is a genuine objective for a democratic South Africa. After all, it is essential that the end of apartheid actually meant the end of domination by a small section of the population in the economy and other areas of life. In practice, however, for the ANC ‘transformation’ means capturing the state by creating a sympathetic business elite who will assist the party to further influence the direction, values and also the narratives within the state. A reading of Marxist theory9 shows that business elites within the state often behave in the same way, even if they were created for a different purpose.
For example, by creating new black elites through state apparatus, the ANC ended up with the classic problem of a class of business people whose creation does not benefit ordinary people or the country as a whole. Even worse, the creation of the BEE class increased the appetite of interest groups to capture the state for their own interests, and not to further the ANC’s transformation imperatives.
When Thabo Mbeki’s administration came to an end, a new group of elites came to dominate the ANC, and just like those before them they wanted a turn at the feeding trough. As their predecessors showed, the state is important in order to sustain a pattern of accumulation that seems to benefit only a few.
By the time Zuma took over as president of the ANC, perceptions of BEE were changing. The suspicion was setting in that BEE might not improve ordinary people’s lives. Many South Africans were waking up to the dim reality that politicians often do not deliver on promises. While Thabo Mbeki rode the wave of Mandela euphoria,10 and used it to his advantage, Zuma had to deal with an angry and disillusioned nation.
Thabo Mbeki presided over state capture; however, his style of engaging with the public did not push the ANC onto the defensive about who was attempting to capture the state and for what purpose. Mbeki himself would probably have pointed out that the state was already subject to capture from foreign and white capital. Thus, Mbeki would defend his project not as state capture but as the freeing of the state from the control of interest groups. Zuma has tried this explanation, but it has not worked for reasons that have to do with his personal lack of credibility and not-so-convincing skills as an interlocutor. His shot at state capture has merely ushered in a less sophisticated and more abrasive episode of a phenomenon that was underway long before he took over as president. Mbeki the centrist did such a crafty job at this that there was not even a public debate about state capture. Instead, the issue was that he centralised power in his office and was not consultative.
Under Zuma’s leadership, however, it has become clear that the state is being captured to further the interests of his family and his friends, including the Gupta family. The ANC, at least under Mbeki’s leadership, and also perhaps while the party was preparing to govern, probably did not foresee the possibility that its attempts to retain control of important parts of the state in order to achieve its policy goals would be an initiative that could be interrupted by other forces. The Zuma years, particularly the manner in which Zuma has related to the state bureaucracy, have highlighted the reality that the ANC could be used to capture the state in the interests of a few connected individuals, such as the Gupta family. Previously, the idea of state capture was seen as something that could only be perpetrated by Western businesses acting in the interests of foreign powers, such as the United States and Great Britain. This idea has preoccupied the ANC and its alliance partners (e.g., the SACP)11 to a point where it has blinded them to the reality that the ANC itself can be subject to state capture.
The ANC’s suspicion about the role of the private sector in post-apartheid South Africa is genuine. Also genuine is the party’s naivety about the real threat of state capture from within the party itself. The party will have to wake up to the idea that its own members are potential proxies for state capture, as demonstrated by Zuma’s relationship with the Gupta family.
Having had to confront the reality that there are indeed attempts at state capture, and that the perpetrators are not the usual suspects backed by Western powers, the ANC has resigned itself to the standard explanation that the party is under siege by corporations with the aim of undermining Zuma’s administration in particular, and the ANC government in general. This is how the party managed to find its way out of Zuma’s blunder in replacing Finance minister Nhlanhla Nene with the ‘little-known’12 Des van Rooyen, in December 2015. The decision sent the markets into free fall, with the rand crashing.13 Realising that his decision was disastrous, Zuma capitulated and a few days later appointed former Finance minister Pravin Gordhan to replace Van Rooyen. (At the time of going to print Gordhan was still Minister of Finance, but there was speculation that he might be charged by the Hawks and forced to resign.) Then the spin began as to how to clean up the fallout from a decision that was quantified as having cost financial markets an estimated R500 billion.14
Questions were immediately raised about what could have been Zuma’s reasons for taking such a drastic – and clearly disastrous – decision. It emerged subsequently that the Gupta family had earlier ‘offered’ Nene’s job to deputy Finance minister Mcebisi Jonas.15 Jonas confirmed in a statement, which he read on live television, that the Gupta family had indeed approached him, and offered him the job of heading the National Treasury. With allegations mounting that the Guptas had been deploying ministers to key government positions, the media started zooming in on the issue of state capture. The ANC switched into public relations mode, with the party’s secretary-general, Gwede Mantashe, angrily making public remarks about the danger of state capture and its negative implications for democracy.16
It is very interesting how the Gupta saga reformulated the state capture debate. Some people17 were bold enough to say that there has been state capture since the end of apartheid, and that the main concern with the Guptas is that they do not represent the traditional face of capital, meaning they are neither white nor Western. The concept of state capture then became more abstract. As the debate raged, Zuma gained a reprieve regarding the extent to which the Gupta family have him in their pockets. The ANC initiated an inquiry into state capture, and asked those with evidence to submit it to Gwede Mantashe’s office. In my opinion, it is impossible for the ANC to investigate a case in which the party is itself the main player.
If the ANC was serious about investigating alleged state capture, the party would have opted for an inquiry to take place outside the party. In order