seeking, such as lobbying or legal interventions, benefits certain groups, rent seeking can also be corrupt and lead ultimately to state capture and repurposing. Corrupt rent-seeking behaviour can undermine the state’s development agenda by diverting resources into the hands of unproductive elites. It follows that if beneficial rents are necessary for development to take place, a system is needed to counteract the inevitable competition to access them from being corrupted by those who gain leverage via political access, bribery, promises of future returns, and so on.
The literature on neopatrimonialism provides examples of countries that managed to accelerate development by effectively deploying beneficial rents to boost specific economic actors.1 Limiting corruption was a key element of these programmes. The most successful ones tended to be guided by a long-term developmental vision and to centralise control of rents so as to limit overly competitive and destructive rent seeking. They never eliminated corruption, but they prevented it from corroding the development process. Centralised rent management can, of course, also be corrupted by power elites who use it to eliminate lower-level competitors in order to further enrich themselves and entrench their power positions.
Symbiotic relationship between the constitutional state and the shadow state
Drawing on the well-developed literature on neopatrimonialism, we refer to the emergence of a symbiotic relationship between the constitutional state and the shadow state.2 The constitutional state is the formalised constitutional, legislative and jurisprudential framework of rules that governs what government and state institutions can and cannot do. The shadow state is the networks of relationships that cross-cut and bind a specific group of people who need to act together in secretive ways so that they can either effectively hide, actively deny or consciously ‘not know’ that which contradicts their formal roles in the constitutional state. This is a world where deniability is valued, culpability is distributed and trust is maintained through mutually binding fear.
Unsurprisingly, therefore, the shadow state is not only the space for extra-legal action facilitated by criminal networks, but also a place where key security and intelligence actions are coordinated. As extra-legal activity becomes more important, ensuring a compliant security and intelligence apparatus becomes a key priority. What matters is the symbiosis between the two, which is what the rent-seeking power elite emerges to achieve.
The symbiosis that binds the power elite consists of the transactions between those located within the constitutional state and those located outside the constitutional state who have been granted preferential access via these networks to the decision-making processes within the constitutional state. These networks have their own rules and logic that endow key players within them with the authority to influence decisions, allocate resources and appoint key personnel. In the South African context the Gupta and Zuma families (popularly referred to as the ‘Zuptas’) have comprised the most powerful node, which has enabled them to determine how the networks operate and who has access. They depend on a range of secondary nodes clustered around key individuals in state departments, SOEs and regulatory agencies.
Radical economic transformation
Although the official African National Congress (ANC) ideology of radical economic transformation is ill defined and lacks a discernible conceptual framework, such transformation is needed if the promise of 1994 is to be realised. Too little has been done to this end. However, because the notion of radical economic transformation is apparently used to mask a political project that enriches the few, subverts South Africa’s democratic and constitutional system, weakens state institutions and expatriates capital overseas, we differentiate between the ideological goal and the real intentions of ANC policy documents. We argue that a new economic consensus will be required that will entail very radical change, but without subverting the constitutional state. For radical economic transformation to become the basis of a new economic consensus it must, in practice, be achieved within the existing constitutional order and an appropriately enacted legislative framework. Contrary to what is stated in ANC policy documents, the power elite professes a commitment to radical economic transformation but sees the constitutional order and legislative framework as obstacles to transformation.
Political project
The political project of the Zuma-centred power elite is the manner in which power is intentionally deployed in ways that serve the interests of this elite. This project is legitimised, in turn, by an ideology that is repeatedly articulated by a specific (but ever-shifting) political coalition of interests (one that includes both the power elite and wider networks). Jacob Zuma’s abuse of power has enabled strategies that are aimed at promoting corrupt rent-seeking practices by preferred networks and the consolidation of power by an inner core around Zuma.
Clientelism
Clientelism is the exchange of goods and services for political support, often involving an implicit or explicit quid pro quo. It involves an asymmetric relationship – that is, a relationship of unequal power – among groups of political actors described as patrons, brokers and clients.
Notes and references
1For a useful overview see Kelsall, T. 2013. Business, Politics and the State in Africa. London: Zed Press.
2Kelsall. 2013. Business, Politics.
Acknowledgements
We would like to acknowledge the support of a wide range of individuals and institutions without whom this publication would not have been possible. However, the arguments, opinions and conclusions presented in the text belong solely to the authors.
We first acknowledge the contributions of those who took risks to talk to us and provide information. We also want to acknowledge the universities and their respective administrations that enabled the researchers to collaborate with each other to do this work, specifically the Universities of Cape Town, Stellenbosch, the Witwatersrand and Johannesburg. We want to acknowledge three institutions that collaborated to manage the funds and provide logistical and office support for the researchers: the Centre for Complex Systems in Transition at the University of Stellenbosch, the Public Affairs Research Institute at the University of the Witwatersrand and the Sustainability Institute. Finally, we want to acknowledge the Open Society Foundation for providing the funding required to conduct the research and publish the original report on which this book is based. They had faith in our capabilities to build a team and publish a report of our findings in a very short space of time.
Foreword
Mcebisi Jonas
In March 2017, a few weeks before Pravin Gordhan and I were removed from the Ministry of Finance by former President Jacob Zuma, I met with Professor Mark Swilling at the Sustainability Institute in Stellenbosch. Mark and I had known each other and worked together for many years and he is someone I had come to rely on in the academic community. I had asked Mark to meet with me to discuss my increasing concern about the polarised, and frankly deliberately rudimentary, debate that was emerging on state capture. As the pressure was mounting on the perpetrators of state capture, so they were ratcheting up the narrative that this was a political project to displace white monopoly capital – a project of radical economic transformation to free black economic empowerment from the insidious forces of what was increasingly referred to as white monopoly capital. I was also concerned that as South Africans scrambled to grasp the meaning of state capture, there was a propensity to simplify it to ‘corruption’.
It was clear that if we as a nation failed to understand the significance of what we were facing, we would also have to accept that our hard-won democracy would
