Blockbuster: South African politics resembles a Hollywood spectacular – with baddies
NEWS ANALYSIS
‘We are accused of having undue influence and of having perpetrated state capture. But the facts speak for themselves: if this is state capture, then we are not very good at it,” wrote Nazeem Howa in March, when still chief executive of the Gupta family investment vehicle, in one of his many attempts to defend the family’s reputation before quitting his job in October.
Seven months later the office of the public protector would release a report suggesting, but never finding outright, that at least one Cabinet minister (Mosebenzi Zwane) and one major parastatal (Eskom) had reduced themselves to vassals scurrying to serve the Gupta family’s business interests. Rules were broken, strange events took place and, at every turn, a single family benefited as the public purse suffered.
The Gupta family, the report suggested, was extremely good at state capture. So good that it would take not only the might of the police and the prosecuting authority but also a fully fledged presidential inquiry to try to unravel the interlaced patronage network they had supposedly woven.
And if there was state capture, then it was done so skilfully that those responsible will get away with it.
The Gupta family has publicly vowed that by the end of February next year it will own no major assets in South Africa. It has not said, nor has the family any obligation to explain, how it will exchange assets valued at billions of rands (though those valuations can be dubious at times) for cash. But once there is no business empire to manage, there is no reason to stay in South Africa; the family is internationally mobile, with historical links to India and new connections in Dubai.
Meanwhile, those who were acting in ways that mysteriously but consistently favoured Gupta business interests — though no findings of corruption or even unethical behaviour have been made against them — remain in offices and boardrooms throughout the country, with a single exception. As the year was winding down, rumours ran rampant that outgoing Eskom chief executive Brian Molefe was in line for a Cabinet post with far greater reach and power than merely managing South Africa’s electricity infrastructure.
The ANC’s unwavering approval of the leadership of President Jacob Zuma — shown first in a parliamentary motion of no confidence, then at the level of its national executive committee (NEC), then through a toothless internal ethics hearing — put the final stamp on it: the winners of the 2016 state capture wars were those accused of doing the capturing, from the political head under whose watch it all happened down to the individuals who allegedly pocketed most of the proceeds.
How is such a thing possible? How can a deputy Cabinet minister (Mcebisi Jonas) publicly declare that he was offered a bribe, but nine months later the supposed resulting criminal investigation is invisible to the public? How can a fellow Cabinet minister (Zwane) falsely state that just about the entire financial regulatory system will be put to inquisition because of the way banks dealt with one family, and suffer no more than a reprimand? How can the president, who reprimanded that minister for the falsehood, later tell the legislature that it remains mightily suspicious that a number of banks applied the law in the same way at the same time based on the same evidence, and the legislature accepts that? How can that same legislature essentially react with a shrug of the shoulders when a constitutionally mandated watchdog reports on rivers of cash being diverted from a state-owned enterprise overseen by that legislature to a family-controlled business empire?
The answer may lie, in part, in a different section of the statement then Gupta employee Howa issued in March. “We find ourselves caught in a political storm and entangled in a confusing web of propaganda, allegations and misinformation,” he said, neglecting to say who had done the weaving.
If the web seemed confusing in March then it was utterly perplexing by the end of the year.
There was a protest that became a hostage incident in the office of the public protector, with the hostage takers (Black First Land First) demanding the focus of state capture be shifted back into the 1990s.
There was a sudden explosion of foundations and organisations with names that pointed to broad
goals but that acted with a narrow focus in promoting the interests of perceived Gupta allies, while hounding those perceived as enemies of the family.
Court actions to keep the public protector’s State of Capture report from being released were launched with great urgency, then abandoned without explanation.
The political head of the finance department, Pravin Gordhan, investigating all major government tenders, with a seeming particular preoccupation with Gupta-linked deals, went from a definite criminal suspect to a probably entirely innocent person in the space of weeks.
And that was just in the real world. Some even weirder things were happening online. Entire armies of Twitter accounts with no discernible individual humans behind them popped up and developed an immediate fascination with Gupta-owned media outlets — and the many supposed failings of the company’s investigators and detractors. Anonymous websites that promised to trigger race-based havoc led back to former Gupta employees who denied any involvement. There was never any proof of a Gupta hand, direct or otherwise, behind these unusual events. But they nonetheless seemed to serve the family’s interests.
What all the resulting noise achieved was similarly inscrutable. None of the propaganda, allegations and misinformation, which the Gupta family said in March was being used against it, had a direct link to, say, the inordinate amount of time apparently necessary for police to investigate a simple bribery allegation, or Parliament’s nonchalance at suggestions that public money was being grossly misapplied.
But the anonymous machinations playing out in the public space were the tip of an iceberg, various insiders suggested, and behind the scenes a full-blown intelligence war was raging.
Between the threats and the blackmail, the promises and the lies, it was difficult to tell friend from foe or reality from fiction, and so little was achieved.
The reason there seemed to be no strategy, nor rhyme or reason, was none was required — just a slowing down to virtual immobility of the turning of institutional wheels.
In a classic heist movie it would have been a cinematic muddle, but a magnificent one: buses blown up and cars set on fire in some streets, marching bands and juggling clowns deployed on others, an entire city grinding itself into gridlock from the cumulative effect. And the audience would be left applauding as the bad guys made off with the loot.
But perhaps not in our own state heist movie.
State capture defined – and it’s a fit in SA
Racist motivations have been ascribed, covert foreign intelligence funding has been suggested and the very definition of what constitutes “state capture” has been questioned as South Africa witnessed an extremely dirty war over the past year.
But the events and evidence former public protector Thuli Madonsela described in her State of Capture report, which retains its official standing until a court strikes it down, if such a day ever arrives, is a near-perfect fit for a definition more than a decade and a half old, one that had nothing to do with South Africa.
In 2000, the World Bank published the book Anticorruption in Transition: A Contribution to the Policy Debate. The countries in transition it examined were those of Eastern Europe, where many an unscrupulous businesspeople and politicians had exploited the void left by the fall of the Soviet Union.
This is how the institution described the state capture it had witnessed in that region:
“The influence of private interests on the decisions of the state is a normal feature of all political systems.
“What separates state capture as a form of corruption from conventional forms of political influence, such as lobbying, are the mechanisms by which the private interests interact with the state.
“State capture occurs through the illicit provision of private gains to public officials via informal, nontransparent, and highly preferential channels of access.
“It can also occur through unclear boundaries between the political and business interests of state officials, which has been a particularly prominent characteristic of many transition countries.
“In all its forms, state capture tends to subvert, or even replace, legitimate and transparent channels of political influence and interest intermediation, reducing the access of competing groups and interests to state officials.”