Related Papers
Anatomy of State Capture
Capturing the Message
Robyn Foley
Anatomy of State Capture
State Capture and Zuma’s Criminal Justice Agenda
2021 •
Gareth Newham
Alternation: Interdisciplinary Journal for the Study of the Arts and Humanities in Southern Africa
Between Ramaphosa’s New Dawn and Zuma’s Long Shadow: Will the Centre Hold?
ashwin desai
African Sun Media eBooks
How State Capture went Nuclear
2021 •
Dzvinka Kachur
Anatomy of State Capture
Final Reflections by the Editors
Robyn Foley
The Thinker
The Language of Liberation and Perpetual Eternity
Anton Pillay
The incarceration of the former South African President Jacob Zuma on charges of contempt of court sparked mass looting, destruction, and damage to a staggering economy attempting to navigate through Covid-19-related repercussions. Early estimates reveal that the initial damage report bill is a R50 billion knock on the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The level of orchestration behind the attacks alludes to state-sponsored violence, given Mr Zuma’s loyal sympathisers within the intelligence community and in the African National Congress. This research postulates that Mr Zuma’s political rhetoric served as the main inciting factor behind the destruction. Indeed, comparative analysis shows how many post-independence/liberation leaders have invoked a language of debt by virtue of their role as independence/liberation heroes to justify dismal governance records. What are the key features of this language of debt?
Review of “How to Steal a Country: State Capture and Hopes for the Future in South Africa”
2021 •
nkosingiphile mkhize
96 A Review of “How to Steal a Country: State Capture and Hopes for the Future in South Africa” Nkosingiphile Mkhize DOI: https://doi.org/10.22151/politikon.48.5 Nkosingiphile Mkhize, from Johannesburg (South Africa), holds two master’s degrees; one in Political Science (research component and defence awarded a distinction) from the Masarykova Univerzita, Czech Republic. The second MA degree in Public Governance (cum laude) from the University of Johannesburg School of Public Management, Governance and Public Policy. He is currently a Ph.D. Candidate with the University of Johannesburg School of Public Management, Governance and Public Policy. His theses focus on integrity, ethics, corruption and anticorruption, and risk management in the South Africa public sector. The broad areas of his Ph.D. thesis focus form part of his key research interests. E-mail: nkosingiphile.e.m18@gmail.com.
Social Research
The More Things Change … South Africa's Democracy and the Burden of the Past
2019 •
Steven Friedman
It is common to understand South African democracy as a familiar tale of disappointment - the presidency of Jacob Zuma, which was associated with the misuse of public money and trust, is often seen as a failure of new democratic institutions. The article rejects this view, arguing that the Zuma period showed the resilience of these institutions. South Africa's democratic flaws stem not from the failure of the new but the persistence of the old
Anatomy of State Capture
State Capture: Why Nobody Did Anything to Stop it
2021 •
Songezo Zibi
Journal of Law and Society
Politics By Other Means in South Africa Today (open access version)
2020 •
Peter Brett
Much writing on law's role in the struggle against apartheid adopted a heroic mode. Rick Abel's classic Politics by Other Means (1995) also used the case of South Africa to make a case for law's 'potential nobility'. But it did so in a manner that was cautious, patient and ultimately more telling. In even the most unpropritious circ*mstances, Abel showed, law could with enormous effort be turned into a defensive shield for the oppressed. As a sword, however, it was 'two-edged', and offered the powerful ample opportunity to frustrate or overturn hard-won symbolic victories. In today's South Africa legal heroism is back. Its Constitutional Court, in particular, has been widely lauded for its role as bulwark against 'state capture' under deposed President Jacob Zuma. For almost a decade its judgements exposed and condemned a series of high-profile corruption scandals. It combated a (Presidential) war on law that had been concealed using secretive security apparatuses entrenched thanks to the global 'war on terror' analysed in Abel's most recent books. A closer examination of these recent events does however do much to vindicate Abel's earlier scepticism about law's offensive value. As a weapon against state capture it has in fact proved more than double-edged. Opposition parties did, it is true, ultimately succeed in removing Zuma following a series of Constitutional Court judgements against him. But just as in Brazil the spectacular deployment of law to fight the crimes of politicians has subsequently unleashed a whole range of unforseen energies. A Ramaphosa administration styling itself as the return of honest government thus now itself struggles with (racially-tinged) state capture allegations advanced by both opposition parties and those suspected of sympathy with the ancien régime. A second such offensive use became increasingly routine over the course of Zuma's tenure. The higher courts began to be constantly elicted by non-govermental organisations in an effort to substitute structural interdicts for Executive inaction. Judges assumed responsibility for day-to-day administration. One almost inevitable casualty of this development was the rule of law as traditionally understood. The sheer onrush of urgent matters requiring immediate remedy saw the Constitutional Court increasingly ignore competing pressures to establish precedent and clarify principle. The whole episode provides yet another illustration of the porosity of the law/politics boundary in exceptional times.
