political corruption before and after apartheid

Journal of Southern African Studies

Political Corruption: Before and after ApartheidAuthor(s): Jonathan HyslopSource: Journal of Southern African Studies, Vol. 31, No. 4, Fragile Stability: State andSociety in Democratic South Africa (Dec., 2005), pp. 773-789Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25065046 .Accessed: 11/03/2011 17:05

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Journal of Southern African Studies, Volume 31, Number 4, December 2005 V\ Routledge | % Taylor & Francis Croup

Political Corruption: Before and After

Apartheid

Jonathan Hyslop

(Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research)

Since South Africa's 1994 political transition, a major feature of the country's new politics has been the centrality of issues of corruption in public controversy. This article aims to

analyse how the administrative and political legacies brought to the present by both the old

South African state structures and the new political leadership produce varying types of

corruption. The article takes three paths to this goal, considering the issues conceptually,

comparatively and historically. First, it argues that most writing on South African

corruption has failed to use the analytically necessary distinctions between concepts of rent

seeking behaviour, patron-client relationships and corruption as such. Second the article

points to the comparative frameworks that may usefully be adopted to examine the question, with particular attention to the work of Chabal and Daloz. Third, the article attempts a

historical overview of corruption questions in South Africa. It contends that there was a high

degree of variability in the levels and nature of rent-seeking activities in the state during the

century of white domination in Southern Africa. The legacies of forms of rent seeking,

patronage and corruption existing within the former white state, the Bantustans, and within

the liberation movement itself have all combined to affect the politics of the post-apartheid state.

Since South Africa's 1994 political transition, a major feature of the country's new politics has been the centrality of issues of corruption in public controversy. From the embezzling of

paltry pension payments by civil service clerks, to allegations of cabinet members'

involvement in shady practices surrounding the procurement of multi-million dollar arms

systems, charges and counter-charges concerning the extent of dishonesty in public administration have flown thick and fast. The largely white opposition party, the Democratic

Alliance (DA), has leaped on such issues to argue that the African National Congress (ANC)

government is riddled with malpractice and systematically covers up for supporters who get

caught with their hands in the till.1 Representatives of the ANC counter that these criticisms are motivated by racism and resentment of social and political change, and that isolated

incidents are being blown out of proportion. President Mbeki and other ANC leaders contend

that the government is dedicated to uprooting corruption, but that malpractice is far less

prevalent than the opposition claims.2

This argument tends to return, in the last instance, to a set of conflicting historical claims.

Liberal and conservative critics of the government generally contend that there is a

qualitative decline in the functioning of the bureaucracy and a disregard for the public institutions and procedures by the ANC. The government accuses such critics of nostalgia for

1 See for example the statement by Tertius Delport of the Democratic Alliance, 23 March 2005, http://www.da.org.

za/da/Site/Eng/News/Article.asp/ID = 5048

2 See for example the statement of Thabo Mbeki, 5 June 2003, http://www.anc.org.za/ancdocs/anctoday/2003/text/ at21.txt

ISSN 0305-7070 print; 1465-3893 online/05/040773-17

? 2005 The Editorial Board of the Journal of Southern African Studies

DOI: 10.1080/03057070500370555

774 Journal of Southern African Studies

the apartheid past. The ANC leadership portrays corruption problems as arising out of the

legacy of the apartheid. Crudely, the polarisation is one around whether the new or the old

orders are more corrupt.

This all constitutes a highly ideological and extremely un-illuminating debate. Even if it

were possible to measure the degree of corruption in the old and new orders, it would not tell

us much about their respective political workings. The significance of corruption in a

democracy and in a racial oligarchy are not easily amenable to sensible comparisons. The only social scientist to have as yet made a substantial contribution to the study of corruption in

post-1994 South Africa is Tom Lodge,3 and his view is helpful in moving beyond the

simplistic polarisation of the public debate. After a very thorough survey of the existing evidence on corruption Lodge argues that '... though old habits and predispositions may well

sustain much of the existing administrative corruption, its apparent expansion is also the

consequence of change'.4 In other words, although there were many forms of endemic

corruption in the old regime, new ones have been layered on to them. Two very different

political orders produce very different types of corruption and what we need to do is identify and account for these types.

This article aims to analyse how the administrative and political legacies brought to the

present by both the old South African state structures and the new political leadership produce such varying types of corruption. The article takes three paths to this goal, considering the

issues conceptually, comparatively and historically. Thus, it first addresses the categories we

may need to use when analysing South African corruption; second, it points to the

comparative frameworks that may usefully be adopted to frame the question; and third,

provides an outline sketch of corruption questions in South African politics since the late

nineteenth century.

The issue of corruption is also a question of representation and of moral economy. That is

not to say it is an imaginary phenomenon or one that should always be considered in a

relativistic way. The existence of corruption can crucially affect whether or not there are

antibiotics on the hospital shelf or food on the pensioner's table. But the public debate in

South Africa also involves clashes over meaning. At first impression what the antagonists in

the South African debate appear to say is that they agree what corruption is, and declare

themselves against it, but disagree on its extent and origins. Yet once one subjects these

discourses to closer scrutiny, it is clear that both between and within political camps, there are

great contestations as to what behaviours are held to constitute corruption and about the

values that underpin such behaviours.

In this examination, the notion of 'scandal' plays a central part. The moment of scandal

has a great sociological usefulness.5 A scandal exposes the hidden geological strata of politics and hidden linkages and connections of which we would otherwise be unaware. But the rise

of 'scandal' in modernity needs also to be understood as characteristic of the rise of a public

sphere, and of the mass media within that public sphere. Many corruption issues surface as a

consequence of investigations by journalists. In the contemporary South African situation the

question of corruption thus overlaps with the issue of the role of the media. The government,

particularly in the Mbeki presidency, has insisted on portraying itself as hounded by a white

dominated press. This is an apparently strange perception, for on most non-government assessments only two newspapers, the small-circulation but influential Mail & Guardian

3 T. Lodge, 'Political Corruption in South Africa', African Affairs, 97 (1998), pp. 157-87; T. Lodge, Politics in

South Africa: from Mandela to Mbeki (Cape Town, David Philip, 2002); T. Lodge, 'The ANC and the

Development of Political Party Politics in Modern South Africa' (seminar paper, WISER, 2003). 4 Lodge, 'Political Corruption', p. 187.

5 J.B. Thompson, Political Scandal: Power and Visibility in the Media Age (Cambridge, Polity, 2000).

Political Corruption: Before and After Apartheid 775

(owned by a Zimbabwean publisher and recently under black editorship) and the

mass-circulation Sunday Times (owned by a black-empowerment company) can be said to

have been particularly incisive in their investigations and aggressive in their coverage of

corruption. Generally, the other papers only pick up on these stories after the Mail and

Guardian or the Sunday Times make it impossible to ignore them. Indeed, it could be argued that most newspapers have been remarkably subservient to government. The question of

corruption is thus also central to battles over the control of information.

In a certain sense, the prevalence of corruption scandals in South African politics is a sign of the health of its democracy. Dictatorships do not allow their media to make scandals

(except on carefully orchestrated occasions). Scandal happens in South Africa because there

is a relatively lively media, a public sphere, and a public discourse that does not always allow

legitimisation of corruption.

Conceptual Questions

One reason that the South African debate on 'corruption' has been so unhelpful is that even

academic writers, with the partial exception of Lodge, have seldom had recourse to the

standard social science concepts used in discussions of corruption in other contexts.

In particular, they seldom use the necessary distinctions between the overlapping but

analytically distinct concepts of rent-seeking behaviour, patron-client relationships and

corruption as such. This has contributed to making it so hard for South Africa discussions of

venality to get beyond the polemical register. In defining rent, I follow the analysis of Khan and Jomo, where a rent is characterised

as 'an income which is higher than the minimum which a firm or an individual would have

accepted given alternative opportunities ... Rents include not just monopoly profits, but

also subsidies and transfers organised through the political mechanism: illegal transfers

organised by private mafias, short-term super-profits made by innovators before

competitors imitate their innovations, and so on'.6 Rents may thus be legal or illegal. Rent seeking behaviour is constituted by any activity that creates or maintains the receipt of rents.

Khan and Jomo usefully define patron-client relationships as 'repeated relationships of

exchange between specific patrons and their clients'.7 Such relationships are further

characterised by a personalised pattern of identifiable patrons and clients; and by significant differences in the status, power, or other characteristics of patrons and of clients. The

existence of patron-client networks is seldom illegal in itself, and a patron may often be able

to help a client in ways -

personal donations or recommendations for instance -

that do not

involve violating rules or procedures. But in contexts of fierce conflicts over scarce resources,

it is unlikely that a patron who is unwilling or unable to break the law will retain his or her

client base.

What types of relations constitute patronage is perhaps open to debate. Some models, for example the famous 'amoral familialism' of Banfield,8 based on his study of Southern

Italy, emphasise a specifically kin basis to patronage, in which moral obligations only function within 'blood' relationships. This is certainly one type of patronage relationship.

A number of other social scientists, particularly in the modernisation school, while

accepting that patronage relationships are not always literally familial, argue that in

6 M. Khan and K.S. Jomo, 'Introduction', in Khan and Jomo (eds), Rents, Rent Seeking and Economic

Development: Theory and Evidence in Asia (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2005), p. 5.

7 Ibid., p. 10.

8 E. Banfield, The Moral Basis of a Backward Society (Chicago, Free Press, 1958).


societies where the idea of the family has a particular power and prestige, patronage relations are likely to be stronger than in those social orders which emphasise individualism.9 Yet surely it is also the case that some highly modern forms of

organisation contain patronage networks based not so much on familial links or thinking as

on ideological or institutional loyalties.

Corruption is notoriously hard to define. But the salient feature would seem to be that

corruption necessarily involves illegal or unprocedural activity, whereas rent-seeking and

patronage do not always do so. Corruption must involve the breach of laws or

administrative rules governing the allocation of public resources for purposes of political or economic gain, or in order to gain coercive power over individuals or groups.

Corruption is probably best defined in a legal positivist manner. An action is corrupt in so

far as it transgresses particular laws or regulations. Whether we think those laws or rules are politically or morally correct is irrelevant to whether or not an action can be

considered corrupt. However heinous a particular action by state officials, we cannot

technically consider it corrupt if it is taken according to due legal and administrative

process.

The debates on risk and trust, and particularly Giddens'10 emphasis on the central

place of experts in the late modern polity, can also be usefully integrated into the

discussion on corruption in South Africa. Questions of corruption interact with the

questions of risk and trust in South Africa in a specific way. The stark conflict of

the apartheid years tended to obliterate any sense of commonalities across racial

boundaries in South Africa. When the ANC entered government, the incumbent experts in

the centre of the civil service in Pretoria, the people who knew how to make the

administrative system work and who advised on technical questions, were not trusted by the incoming regime. Although the ANC had some highly educated and trained cadres, few had any experience of the organisation of a modern state. The ANC had therefore the

classic dilemma of an insurgent regime; they had to manage the immense risks of

transition, while relying on a bureaucracy in which they had no trust. This circumstance

has tended to favour a situation in which government prioritises considerations of political

reliability of officials and of political stability over considerations of the effectiveness or

probity of public services.

Comparative Questions

The South African public debate on corruption has contained a series of explicit or implicit

comparisons with other countries. Broadly, three positions can be identified. The

conservative critique of the new government contrasts the supposed probity of 'first world'

countries with 'third world', and specifically African corruption. Government leaders and

supporters point out in reply that corruption can be found in most political orders, or

implicitly compare South Africa with countries that have experienced corruption problems, but have overcome them in the process of modernisation. Finally, those attacking the ANC

from the left condemn corruption as just one dimension of the exploitative behaviour of the

elite and the rise of capitalism, comparing South Africa to other postcolonial states that have

thrown up self-aggrandising elites.

All of these implicit or explicit comparisons rely to some degree on caricatures of social

realities. The conservative position, which is based on cultural determinism, gratuitously

9 S.M. Lipset and G.S. Lenz, 'Corruption, Culture and Markets', in L.E. Harrison and S.P. Huntington (eds), Culture Matters: How Values Shape Human Progress (New York, Basic Books, 2000), pp. 112-24.

10 A. Giddens, Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age (Cambridge, Polity, 1991).


racialises corruption, falsely homogenising western governments. For example, consider the

relatively clean record of public administration in the Netherlands compared with the

intractable and squalid scandal of neighbouring Belgium.11 Such views also ignore the recent

provenance of what is now regarded as clean government in the metropolis.12 In Britain 150

years ago, military commissions were openly bought and sold and there was no such thing as

competitive public examinations for civil service positions. The United States' political party

system was built on corrupt patronage politics, an art still practised in 1960 by Mayor Daley of Chicago when he fixed his state's vote in the presidential election in favour of John

F. Kennedy.

But the implication of the government's position that South Africa is on the path of

countries that have contained corruption is also problematic. First, the fact that it is in

principle possible to follow such a path does not mean that South Africa is on it. Second, the

problem is as much about newly emerging problems as about historical legacies. And third, modernisation does not in itself defeat corruption. Italy, in the second half of the twentieth

century, developed an advanced economy with a high standard of living, despite the grip of

the Mafia on the highest levels of politics. Marxist accounts of corruption in Africa, pitting a corrupt elite against exploited masses,

may work for some cases but fail to explain the strength of vertical patronage networks. This

kind of analysis is baffled by the existence of political loyalties that cut across class lines.

The most influential recent attempt to address the question of whether the problem of

corruption in Africa has a specific character is Chabal and Daloz's book Africa Works.13

Although Chabal and Daloz specifically deny that their analysis applies to South Africa, their

observations resonate strongly enough with the experience of a South African reader to

ask whether their model is not, indeed, the appropriate comparative model for the South

African case.

Chabal and Daloz argue that the state in Africa is a relatively empty shell. The real

business of politics is conducted informally, outside the official realm. There is little

institutionalisation, and hence conventional notions of corruption, which rely on a clear

delineation of private and public spheres, have little relevance. The 'disorder' that exists in

such a situation can then be instrumentalised by power brokers. In the Chabal and Daloz

model, 'corruption' in Africa is all about vertical social networks; for reasons of personal and political survival, people at all levels of society need to participate in chains of

intermediary relationships, gift-giving and material pr?dation. Corruption is thus at a

qualitatively and quantitatively different level than in the metropolitan countries. It is an

integral part of social life, relatively legitimate and relatively unconcealed. Governments

from time to time denounce corruption in principle, but this is a ritualistic activity with no

relation to practical politics. In Chabal and Daloz's view, corruption in Africa has its own

moral economy. Far from being a-moral it is based on a sense of obligation, but only toward a clearly defined group, and not to the state, its laws, or a conception of national

community.

Chabal and Daloz also examine the question of the link between corruption and

development. They contend - and in this they seem to be supported by the findings of a

number of scholars of Asia - that there is a stark difference between the effects of corruption in Africa and in East Asia. Whereas, in several East Asian cases, corruption seems to have

boosted growth by lubricating the wheels of rusty political systems, in Africa corruption has

caused growth and development to seize up. Why should this be? Chabal and Daloz use the

HD. Delia Porta and Y. Meny (eds), Democracy and Corruption in Europe (London, Pinter, 1997). 12 H.-J. Chang, Kicking Away the Ladder (London, Anthem, 2002). 13 P. Chabal, and J.-P. Daloz, Africa Works: Disorder as Political Instrument (Oxford, IIA/James Currey, 1999).


South Korean case as a comparative reference point here: a country with a bad reputation for

corruption but a spectacular history of economic success. In their view, the contrasts run like

this: in Africa the proceeds of corruption are distributed to large social networks and

dispersed, whereas in Korea they go to much smaller networks and are hoarded; in Africa

much of the proceeds go on consumption, conspicuous or otherwise, while in South Korea it

is often productively invested; in Africa, corruption is fairly open and accepted, in Korea it is

relatively clandestine; in Africa the money stolen by high officials is generally sent out of the

country, whereas in Korea it is typically invested internally. One might add that the Korean

model, in the case of major contracts, involves skimming money 'off the top' of a viable

project, whereas in Africa the looting of a project may be so deep as to prevent it being

implemented at all.

Chabal and Daloz's model therefore seems to imply a comparative framework something like this.

Low Corruption/High Growth

Corruption is rare, horizontally organised, concentrated on senior officials, is highly

illegitimate and subject to effective sanctions. Corruption breaches well-articulated public

private boundaries and procedures, and is not extensive enough to affect national economic

performance (for example, Sweden).

High Corruption/High Growth

Corruption is mainly horizontal with limited vertical networks; is widespread amongst senior

officials; is viewed as somewhat illegitimate and is subject to sanctions to some extent; helps to circumvent rigidities in bureaucracy and rigidities in institutions, and thus is, on balance, beneficial for development (for example, South Korea).

High Corruption/Low Growth

An 'Empty Shell' state; extensive vertical corruption networks; corruption permeates all

levels of administration; corruption is highly legitimate and real sanctions against it are

lacking; corruption is a massive drain on national economic performance (for example, Democratic Republic of Congo).

The methodological assumptions that inform Chabal and Daloz's work are strikingly

interesting. They point out that discussions about corruption in social science tend to be

obsessed with normative questions, which distract attention from analytical ones. In other

words, social scientists are so busy trying to 'solve' the 'problem' of corruption that this

focus has become an obstacle to understanding how politics actually operates. Chabal and

Daloz urge that what needs to be investigated are the cultural, social and psychological bases of the mentalities that make the practice of corruption possible. In this way, they argue, the relations of reciprocity and the vertical networks on which corruption depends can be investigated. They also urge a focus on the legitimacy that corruption enjoys in certain polities. If it has deleterious social consequences, how does it remain

acceptable? I will now consider the usefulness of this framework for understanding the South African

case. The Chabal-Daloz picture has both clear weaknesses and strengths. One difficulty with


their paradigm would seem to be that, despite the authors' specific denials, it might have a

strong tendency to relapse into cultural essentialism and homogenisation. Sometimes the

Chabal and Daloz formulations seem uncomfortably close to Etounga-Manguelle's argument that there is a common and unitary set of African cultural traits that are blocking

modernisation.14 It is true that, in disclaiming cultural essentialism, Chabal and Daloz argue that they are dealing with 'a code of conduct which is at the heart of modern economic

activities'.15 But the combination of an emphasis on mentalities and how these link to

networks which are often kin-based surely do make them vulnerable to such charges. Yet the

emphasis on the study of mentalities and moral economies is a useful focus if we want to

understand how the actual politics in which individuals engage operates, rather than seeing

political action merely as a reflex of institutional or economic systems, or as a failure to live

up to some abstract model of state organisation.

Historical questions

Given the contrasting claims made about the rise or demise of corruption since 1994, it

may be useful to attempt some assessment of the history of corruption in South Africa and

the polities that immediately preceded it. Such a survey, based on the analytical categories

(rent-seeking, patronage, corruption, risk-trust) and the international comparisons elaborated above, will help to move beyond the simplistic assumptions of the current

public debate.

Towards a Rational-bureaucratic State? 1870-1910

Corruption in the Transvaal in the age of Paul Kruger's South African republic was the

subject of a discursive struggle that is not without contemporary parallels. The propaganda of

those advocating a British takeover of the territory made administrative corruption one of

their major themes. The pro-imperial lobby, both in Transvaal and in Britain itself, portrayed the Boer regime as one so backward as to be incapable of providing adequate support to the

modernisation of the country which the 1886 gold discoveries had made possible. Kruger's defenders portrayed these arguments as reflecting the sectional interests of mine owners who

wanted public interests subjected to their own.

As in the present, the reality was much more complex than the polemics. Before the first

Boer War of 1881, the Transvaal was a feeble, almost non-existent state. Great power lay in

the hands of local Boer patriarchs whose activities extended to the kidnapping and

indenturing of young Africans, in a system bordering on slavery. Power was thus organised in a somewhat pre-modern manner.

However Kruger did, in the late 1880s and the 1890s, make some strenuous and partly successful efforts to modernise. A civil service organisation was developed under the

leadership of Dr Leyds, a clever if serpentine Netherlander bought in to oversee the process.

Leyds brought with him a small cadre of well-educated Dutch administrators to run the

system he set up.

Kruger was determined that his supporters should benefit from the new wealth and he

developed economic policies that might bring new rent-seeking opportunities to those

within his patronage networks. His main policy in this regard was one of granting

14 D. Etounga-Manguelle, 'Does Africa Need a Cultural Adjustment Program?', in L.E. Harrison and S.P.

Huntington (eds), Culture Matters: How Values Shape Human Progress (New York, Basic Books, 2000),

pp. 65-77.

15 Chabal and Daloz, Africa Works, p. 95.


'concessions'; the right to manufacture or distribute a particular category of goods within the Transvaal. These inevitably went to entrepreneurs who were well-disposed toward the

regime. Often built into these contracts were clauses that would ensure that the business

concerned would utilise the agricultural produce of Kruger's Boer supporters. These rent

seeking opportunities for selected businessmen and farmers necessarily imposed premium

prices on the mining industry, and to a lesser extent on urban workers. Inevitably patronage networks formed around the concession holders, who were able to issue lucrative sub

contracts. The results were mixed. A high degree of personalism and arbitrary administration continued, and anecdotal evidence certainly indicates a great deal of

nepotism and financial laxity in the civil service. Some concessions did genuinely stimulate

Transvaal industrialisation: others were money down the drain.16 Kruger thus succeeded in

consolidating his political base but at the risk of adding to the mine owners' and pro

imperialists' grievances against his state.

Politically, Sir Alfred Milner's conquest administration of the Transvaal after the South

African War (1899-1902) was a failure: he did not establish the permanent British

hegemony over South Africa, which he desired. But administratively, Milner's re

organisation of the Transvaal had consequences for the future South African state that

continue down to the present. Milner impressed a Whitehall model of bureaucracy on the

Transvaal, drawing on his extensive experience at the British Treasury and in administering the finances of Egypt. He recruited a significant number of British and colonial loyalist

personnel into the Transvaal bureaucracy, and many of these stayed on to take senior

positions in the new South African state when it was formed in 1910. The new civil service

cohered around Pretoria, not just because it became the administrative capital, but also

because of the superior degree of professionalism that the Milner era had brought. Milner's

administration swept aside the Kruger system, destroying the old regime's patronage networks.17

Broadly, the Milner legacy did facilitate the rent-seeking activities of the Anglophone mine owners. This was accompanied by the elaboration of a rational-legal bureaucratic

structure on a larger scale than had previously been attempted in South Africa. There was a

clear reduction in the levels of corruption in the Transvaal and there is little evidence of

corruption in the senior levels of the South African bureaucracy in the immediately

succeeding decades.

Stabilisation of the White Dominion State: 1910-1948

The decades after the Union of South Africa was established in 1910 were dominated by the

project, elaborated and led by Jan Smuts, of establishing a strong white-controlled polity within the British Empire. In terms of bureaucratic structure, there was a high level of

continuity with the Milner era. The civil service was characterised by a continuing strong

presence of British or South African Anglophone officials at the senior levels. Corruption in

the senior bureaucracy appears to have remained low, although the steady elaboration of the

pass system controlling the movements of black workers opened up opportunities for junior officials and policemen to extort bribes from the victims of the system. The 1924-1933

government of General Hertzog did attempt to provide rent-seeking opportunities for

Afrikaner farmers and workers (for example through agricultural subsidies and extended use

of white labour in parastatals such as the railways). But Hertzog was constrained in this by his

16 D. Blackburn, and W.W. Caddell, Secret Service in South Africa (London, Cassell, 1911). 17 S. Marks and S. Trapido, 'Lord Milner and the South African State', in P. Bonner (ed.), Working Papers in

Southern African Studies: Volume 2 (Johannesburg, Ravan Press, 1981), pp. 52-96.


alliances with Anglophone-based groupings (Creswell's Labour Party 1924-1933 and

Smuts' supporters 1933-1939).

However, with the rise of the extremist Malan wing of Afrikaner nationalism, as a

political party opposed to Hertzog in 1934, a new kind of patronage network was emerging. Crucial in this was the clandestine Afrikaner Broederbond, a secret society that played a key role in co-ordinating the activities of Malan's supporters. When the Malan party came to

power in the 1948 general election, the Broederbond patronage network found the state at the

disposal of its rent-seeking activities.18 In the rural areas, the partial use by government of indirect rule administration did vest

traditional chiefs with a degree of opportunity for rent-seeking and corrupt activity. But given the poverty of the period, the pickings were meagre.

The High Tide of Afrikaner Nationalism and Apartheid: 1948-1972

The victory of the National Party and the introduction of apartheid policies also signified an

administrative revolution. Malan and his successors pursued blatant strategies of promoting Afrikaner rent-seeking, although generally within the bounds of legality.

The National Party initiated a drive to force Anglophones out of the civil service. They did this for two reasons. First, non-Afrikaners were politically suspect. Second, civil

service employment became a theatre of rent-seeking in itself. By vastly expanding the

numbers of Afrikaners employed in the civil service, particularly at the junior levels, stable

employment and upward social mobility was provided for working-class and lower middle

class Afrikaners. The overall size of the bureaucracy increased immensely; by 1967 the

number of people directly employed by civil service departments stood at four times the

1939 level.19 Preferential funding of Afrikaner cultural and educational institutions, the favouring of

Afrikaner enterprises in the awarding of contracts, and the vast extension of Afrikaner

dominated parastatal organisations all constituted policies which favoured the rent-seeking of government supporters. The Broederbond played a clear role in co-ordinating the

patronage activities that stood behind this process. The social effects were dramatic,

facilitating the rise of much larger professional, managerial and capitalist strata amongst Afrikaners.

The political leadership did pay a price for these policies. The new officials at senior

levels lacked the expertise of those they had replaced, and there were persistent skill

shortages in administration over the next decades. The recruits to the junior levels were often

amongst the least educated and enterprising amongst less affluent whites. There was a certain

decline in the level of professionalism of the civil service.

But although the role of patronage in these changes was so great, there is relatively little

evidence of overt corruption in the top ranks of the bureaucracy. There is no doubt that in

these years a substantial portion of senior civil servants, however misguidedly, genuinely believed that they were serving the volk. Moreover corruption was somewhat constrained by the legal fetishism that was characteristic of Afrikaner nationalist ideology in this period.

Even the most dire apartheid measures were carried through with punctilious legal formalism, and the actions of civil servants were scrutinised by their superiors with this in mind.

18 D. O'Meara, Forty Lost Years: The Apartheid State and the Politics of the National Party, 1948-1994

(Johannesburg, Ravan Press, 1996). 19 D. Posel, 'Labour Relations and the Politics of Patronage: A Case Study of the Apartheid Civil Service', in

G. Adler (ed.), Public Service Labour Relations in a Democratic South Africa (Johannesburg, Wits University Press, 2000), pp. 41-61.


However, the Kafkaesque elaboration of the administration of racist legislation, especially the pass laws, undoubtedly intensified corruption at the lower levels of the

bureaucracy. Here minor officials, both white and increasingly by the 1970s, black, had the

opportunity to gouge money out of impoverished migrants. The 1960s were of course the era of South Africa's greatest economic boom. It is clear

that this was entirely compatible with a high degree of patronage-driven rent-seeking,

although it was not accompanied by a high level of overt corruption in the senior

bureaucracy.

The Unravelling of Apartheid and the Efflorescence of Corruption: 1972-1984

From around 1972, a slow retreat from the purist Verwoerdian model of apartheid began to be

visible in state policy. There was a drift towards 'softening' segregationist measures,

accepting the permanent presence of an urban black population, and attempting to integrate the coloured and Indian minorities into the white polity. The government, especially in the

early years of P.W. Botha's presidency, sought to pursue this agenda while retaining power in

white hands. It was during this period that corruption in government, administration and

parastatals seems to have really taken off. In this sense, the rise of corruption in the South

African state is closely linked to the particular way in which the apartheid system

disintegrated. In the high apartheid era, the Afrikaner nationalist leadership had been informed by a

genuine, if misplaced, sense of mission. Their followers were tightly structured by a network

of Afrikaner-exclusivist cultural, social and political organisations. But by the 1970s the very success of Afrikaner nationalism had created a large new middle class and a substantial

capitalist class, who were enjoying an unprecedented prosperity. These highly educated, consumerist and increasingly well-travelled groupings could no longer be contained within

the horizons of organisations built around the poor and struggling of the 1930s and 1940s.

And the confusion into which government policy descended meant that there was no longer a

clear ideological vision of the future.

With the Afrikaner establishment unable to discipline its followers, a scramble for

personal enrichment began. This was reflected at the highest levels. The orientation of the

National Party leadership almost visibly shifted from an ethos of service to the volk to an

interest in the establishment of Swiss bank accounts. A glimpse into this world was provided

by the 'Muldergate' scandal of the late 1970s, which unseated Connie Mulder, at one time the

heir apparent to B.J. Vorster. In this episode it emerged that clandestine funds had not only been used to manipulate internal and external media's presentation of South Africa, but that

much of this money had been siphoned off or diverted by officials or government supporters. For example, the entrepreneur Louis Luyt not only used such funds to establish a pro

government newspaper, but along the way also used some of the money to prop up his failing fertiliser company.20 As the economy stagnated the country seems to have shifted

dramatically from a low-corruption high-growth to a high-corruption low-growth scenario.

There was a peculiar contradiction to the version of apartheid practised in the 1970s and

early 1980s. At exactly the moment when the National Party's ideological commitment to

apartheid began to weaken, the organisation of administration along apartheid lines reached

its culminating stage. The building of the rural 'homeland' states, some of them 'enjoying' nominal independence from South Africa, was being completed. In order to make this project

politically plausible, billions of rands were spent on recruiting black civil servants to staff the

homeland bureaucracies, on supporting traditional chiefs, and on construction projects in

20 O'Meara, Forty Lost Years, pp. 232-3.


homeland capitals. Whole new social strata of black bureaucrats and political brokers

emerged, to become at least partial beneficiaries of this system. Homeland government became a by-word for corruption and incompetence. Official extortion in relation to

everything from the issuing of trading permits upwards was rife. Homeland leaders presided over massive patronage networks.21

Further opportunities for official rent-seeking were afforded by the legal fiction of

homeland independence. For example, casino gambling, then illegal in South Africa, could be

made legal in the homelands. The Sun hotel group moved into this space, allowing homeland

officials great opportunities to rake off rents. This relationship was epitomised by a celebrated

occasion on which hotel executives allegedly bribed George Matanzima, brother of the

Transkei president, to the tune of several million rands in cash, in exchange for gambling

rights.22 With their particularly lax administration and pliable officials, the homelands

became a happy hunting ground for shady entrepreneurs from South Africa and abroad.

It does seem that in many respects the homelands became an extreme version of the

Chabal-Daloz model, with an empty shell state, vertical patronage networks and a

dysfunctional relation of corruption to economic growth. A massive gap opened between

rural and urban administration. Despite their increasing corruption problems, the Pretoria

based civil service retained a fairly good level of organisational functioning. On the other

hand, the homeland bureaucracies never attained any real effectiveness, acting more as a

conduit for the delivery of patronage than of services.

A further contributing factor to the efflorescence of corruption was the government's response to the development of the international campaign for sanctions during the 1970s and

1980s. The importance to the state of sanctions-busting and the countering of hostile opinion abroad meant that those involved in activities directed to these ends were shielded from

normal public service or parliamentary scrutiny. Officials and intelligence operatives, in their

searches for oil, arms, technology and pro-South African copy in the western media,

increasingly entered into relations with global criminal networks, including the Italian Mafia.

Transactions through fictive offshore companies became features of state business. The

temptations for officials to skim off some of this invisible money was strong. There was a dimension of the internal political struggle conducted by the ANC-aligned

organisations inside the country during the 1980s that would have been problematic for the

practice of governance after the fall of apartheid. Foreign donors put large amounts of money into South Africa in order to finance oppositional activity. Because of the security difficulties

entailed in doing this, a system developed where well-regarded resistance figures were

entrusted with substantial quantities of cash to dish out on an ad hoc basis; proper records were not kept. Although no doubt most leaders honoured the trust placed in them, some did

not. A cavalier ethos in the handling of money and a sense of being above the mundane

processes of accounting were fostered amongst some who rose to positions of power after the

transition.

There was also an aspect of the political culture of the exiled ANC which was to have a

bearing on corruption issues at a later stage. In the context of guerrilla war and underground work, the ANC, understandably, developed an overriding ethos of organisational loyalty. This sense of loyalty to comrades as a value that transcends all others, was to be carried over

into the post-apartheid government. Such loyalties can easily be transmuted into patronage networks and make it difficult for deeds of corruption by those old comrades to be publicly

acknowledged or denounced by the ANC.

21 R. Southall, South Africa 's Transkei: The Political Economy of an Independent Bantustan (London, Heinemann,

1982). 22 http://www.guardian.co.uk/dome/article/0,2763,1056278,00.html


Although the post-apartheid government tends to claim that the white-dominated media did not attack corruption under the apartheid era, this is not strictly true. However, as in the

present, it was only one or two papers -

notably the Rand Daily Mail and Sunday Express that

waged aggressive investigative campaigns, with the others trailing behind.

Looting the State: 1984-1994

The mid-1980s saw the last-ditch attempt of the security establishment to maintain white

control through a combination of repression and co-ordination of the civilian agencies of

government in pursuit of the military's total strategy. By the end of the decade, this bid had

collapsed, and the way was open, under F.W. De Klerk's leadership of the National Party, for

the negotiations leading to the political transition. In these circumstances, corruption at the

top levels of the administration attained new heights. The displacement of the civil service from the centre of power by the soldiers offended

senior civil servants, causing further institutional strains. Then, once it became clear that the

end of white rule was at hand, there was a rush to grab as much in the way of spoils as possible before the curtain came down. De Klerk shut down the Department of Development Affairs

(DDA) in 1991, after a commission under Judge Pickard found that it was a swamp of

corruption. Pickard wrote that 'public officials felt they were missing out if they were not

helping themselves' and noted significantly that 'many of these officials had become

disillusioned by their futile efforts to serve apartheid ideology'.23 Similarly, an inquiry into

the Department of Education and Training (DET) found the department riddled

with 'corruption, fraud, bribery, kickbacks ... and a general lack of accountability'.24 The Director-General of this department had awarded contracts to his son's company.

It is true that not all Pretoria-based departments were equally corrupt, and it is probably

significant that the DDA and the DET were amongst the departments most clearly identified

with apartheid policies. Nevertheless, there was a continuing decline of the health of the

bureaucracy. As the hour of change approached, there was widespread handing out of sudden

promotions and spectacular golden handshakes in Pretoria as well as in the homelands.

Military, police, and intelligence agencies also took a significant part in the growing

corruption. Working outside normal bureaucratic control or parliamentary oversight, the

operatives of Military Intelligence, the National Intelligence Service and the Civilian

Co-operation Bureau (CCB) built themselves global networks of assets, in support of covert

operations and personal enrichment. (I was told by an investigator: 'We think they had a golf course in Brazil, but we haven't been able to find it yet.') Army units became involved in

ivory and drug smuggling, while the CCB recruited much of its personnel from the

underworld. Again this does not apply equally to all sections of the military; the Air Force,

Navy and conventional force army seem to have stayed relatively 'clean', while intelligence,

special forces and mercenary units seem to have been rotten to the core. It was no accident

that it was from the latter groups that the 'third force' violence of the early 1990s came. And

the current radical incompetence of the police force is certainly in part a legacy of the

focusing in the 1970s and 1980s away from fighting crime and toward counter-revolutionary

activity.25

23 C. Bauer, 'Public Sector Corruption and its Control in South Africa', in K.R. Hope and B.C. Chikulo (eds),

Corruption and Development in Africa: Lessons from Country Case-Studies (Basingstoke, Macmillan, 2000), p. 220.

24 Ibid., p. 225.

25 S. Ellis, 'The New Frontiers of Crime in South Africa', in J.-F. Bayart, S. Ellis and B. Hibou (eds), The

Criminalization of the State in Africa (Oxford, James Currey, 1999), pp. 49-68; H. Hammann, Days of the

Generals (Cape Town, Zebra, 2001).


Corruption in Contemporary South Africa

This historical sketch provides the essential background for understanding why corruption in

the first decade of South African democracy has not appeared in ways that fit neatly into any of the theoretical conceptualisations or comparative models discussed earlier in this article. In

bringing together the old central state and its leadership, the homeland bureaucracy and the

liberation movement structure and leadership, the new order has both perpetuated old forms

of corruption and synthesised new ones. Thus we see a whole gamut of forms of corruption,

ranging from those typical of sub-Saharan Africa, to those we would find in East Asia and

Europe.

The old, Afrikaner-dominated national government departments had, as we have noted, shown increasing signs of d?stabilisation and tendencies to corruption during the preceding decades. From 1994, intense new internal strains developed in the various departments and

parastatals, as ANC ministers took charge, political appointments were made at senior levels, and a policy of racial affirmative action in civil service appointments was pursued.

Nevertheless, it would be wrong to portray the major government departments as politically

paralysed. Sabotage of new policies by old regime civil servants proved less of a problem than many had predicted. A surprisingly high proportion of the old Afrikaner bureaucracy

accepted the new dispensation and conscientiously served the new state, while many of their more disgruntled colleagues were retired on favourable terms. An interesting dimension of

this relatively positive outcome within the white bureaucracy was that the gender affirmative

action dimension of the new state's policies favoured the promotion of previously

marginalised but administratively experienced white women in the civil service. Although some of the new civil servants were chosen for their political loyalty rather than their ability, the civil service was able to obtain the services of some of the best of the available pool of black graduates. Most central government departments have shown a fair degree of

functionality in the new era, and corruption has been relatively contained. The worst cases

of lower to middle level corruption in central government departments can often be traced

back to continuities with the past, combined with ineffective ministerial leadership. A case in

point is the Ministry of Home Affairs, which has been plagued by a string of cases of arrests

of officials for selling false papers to foreign nationals. Under the old regime the department built an unenviable reputation for xenophobia and obstructionism, and this only altered for the worse under the ministerial control of the ANC's coalition partner, Chief Mangosuthu

Buthelezi of the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP). The nine new provincial administrations though, were extensively afflicted by corruption.

Here there was a clear correlation between the level of systematic corruption and the degree of administrative continuity with the old homeland administrations. The incompetence and

corruption of the old statelets was simply carried over into the new era, with the difference

that civil servants now often enjoyed the patronage and protection of ANC leaders. The most

extreme corruption has appeared in the three provinces where the regional civil service was

most extensively and exclusively drawn from the old Bantustan structures - the Eastern

Cape, Mpumalanga and the Northern (Limpopo) province. Mpumalanga and the Eastern

Cape represent a sort of reductio ad absurdum of misgovernment and corruption. In

Mpumalanga, after the 1999 elections, three ANC provincial ministers who had previously been sacked in relation to corruption were re-appointed to the provincial executive. The ANC

provincial premier, Ndaweni Mahlangu kicked off his term of office by assuring a press conference that it was normal for politicians to lie. The Eastern Cape was on a similar level. The 2002 report of the state-supported Human Rights Commission identified civil service fraud in pensions and other social benefits as particularly acute in the province. A reforming


director-general who had attempted to crack down on corruption in the education department fled the province after death threats. Funds for the feeding of school children were looted. The

provincial cabinet member responsible for health ran a private ambulance service, apparently without damage to his career.26 Even those regional institutions that fell under central

government were often allowed to pursue a catastrophic path. The Eastern Cape's UNITRA

university's first post-apartheid Vice-Chancellor, Professor A. Moleah, managed to turn a

R50 million credit in the university's accounts in 1994 into a R150 million deficit in 1999.

Then Minister of Education Sibusiso Bhengu defended Moleah's patently incompetent and

arbitrary administration. When the University Council, led by anti-apartheid veteran and

noted sociologist Fatima Meer objected to Moleah's conduct, Bhengu created a new council

that was more sympathetic to Moleah.27 Presumably the government's calculation was that

leaving local interests alone would be a popular policy. The ANC provincial leadership spectacularly failed to tackle the rampant corruption in

the Eastern Cape, and eventually President Mbeki sent in an external interim management team to attempt to rectify matters in the province. In April 2003 the team produced a report

identifying major deficiencies in the Health, Education, Social Development and Public

Works Departments. The deficiencies of the province's political leadership were exemplified

by Premier Makhenkesi Stofile's response when questioned about the report by a journalist:

Our responsibility is simply to make sure that our policies are in line with national policies,

development policies, and the delivery of services. The actual operations are not our

responsibility; they're the responsibility of the administration.28

Of course it was precisely this kind of approach that had allowed the corrupt practices inherited from the Bantustan era to continue unchecked. At least in the cases of Eastern Cape,

Mpumalanga and Northern Province the provincial administrations seem to approach the

Chabal-Daloz model of a state with feeble capacity, resting on a politics of vertical

patronage networks.

Attitudes toward corruption in the post-1994 political leadership were certainly affected

by the ANC s 180-degree shift in ethos from advocacy of an austere socialism in the mid

1980s to celebration of the self-enrichment of a new black elite by the mid-1990s. Under

Mandela, and even more under Mbeki, government policy encouraged rent-seeking activity

by black entrepreneurs through the economic preferences they were given through a whole

gamut of policies, especially those relating to the awarding of state contracting and corporate

ownership. The tendency of such policies was to create a climate in which the line between

legal forms of rent-seeking and outright corruption and cronyism became increasingly blurred. Senior ANC figures became increasingly comfortable with seeking material rewards

for their past political contributions and old 'struggle' networks provided political connections that could be parlayed into economic leverage. Jomo and Gomez's analysis of

the effects of similar policies in Malaysia in the 1980s would seem to have considerable

application to the South African case: although 'ostensibly favouring the politically dominant

but economically deprived indigenous community ... such intervention has primarily advanced the interest of self-aggrandising, politically influential elites'.29 Some of the corrupt

activity arising in this context may have rested on and responded to vertical patronage

26 Lodge, Politics in South Africa, pp. 129-252; K. Malherbe, '"Stretching Solidarity Too Far": The Impact of

Fraud and Corruption on Social Security in South Africa', Law, Democracy and Development, 5, 1 (2001),

pp. 109-26; Human Rights Commission, 4th Annual Economic and Social Rights Report, 2000-2002 (Pretoria, Human Rights Commission, 2002).

27 A. Habib, 'The Institutional Crisis of the University of the Transkei', Politikon, 28, 2 (2001), pp. 157-79.

28 Sunday Times, 27 April 2003.

29 K.S. Jomo and E.T. Gomez, 'The Malaysian Development Dilemma', in Khan and Jomo (eds), Rents, Rent

Seeking and Economic Development, p. 289.


networks. However, its more spectacular examples do not seem to evoke the Chabal-Daloz

model but rather the East Asian example of self-enrichment by narrow groups of senior

leaders. The most important example of this corruption at the senior level of the elite is the so

called Arms Scandal, which became one of the dominant political features of the first term of

Mbeki's presidency, and this development is important enough to deserve detailed

consideration.

The scandal involves the procurement of ships and aircraft for the Defence Force, contracts for which were negotiated in the late 1990s and awarded to a European Union

consortium in 2000. A striking feature of the affair is that it demonstrates the emergence of a

confluence of interest between new and old elites, in this case between the military-industrial

complex of the old regime and the leaders of their former guerrilla opponents. The apartheid era players in this story are BKS, an Afrikaner firm that enjoyed major civilian and military

engineering contracts under P.W. Botha, and ADS, the leading military electronics firm of the

Botha era which, during the mid-1990s, was sold to the French arms conglomerate Thomson

CSF (now Tha?es). On the liberation movement side, the leading dramatis personae are Joe

Modise, the former commander of the ANC s military wing, and Defence Minister to

Mandela; Mbeki (politically responsible for the arms deal); Jacob Zuma, Mbeki's Deputy President, and former head of ANC intelligence and Mac Maharaj, underground leader of the

ANC s last military campaign, Operation Vula, and Minister of Transport under Mbeki. Also

in the ANC circle are the Shaik brothers: 'Mo' Shaik, a leading ANC intelligence operative and later Ambassador to Algeria; 'Chippy' Shaik, a key adviser to Modise on the arms

acquisitions, and later head of Defence Force procurement; and Schabir Shaik, businessman

and personal financial adviser to Zuma.

In 1996, Maharaj's department awarded a R265 million contract for driving licence

provision to a consortium that included a Schabir Shaik company and Thomson-CSF. From

around this time, Schabir Shaik-linked companies commenced regular personal payments to

Maharaj. When Maharaj left office in 1999, he joined the board of FirstRand Bank. During

Maharaj's leadership of the Transport Department, a contract for a major national road had

been awarded to a consortium that included a FirstRand subsidiary, a Shaik-connected

company, Nkobi Holdings and BKS. When Modise left office in 2000, he would become

chair of BKS. In November 1998, a senior Thomson delegation arrived from France. They met with Schabir Shaik and sold a block of ADS shares to Nkobi Holdings. In September

1999, Alain Thetard of Thomson returned to South Africa for another meeting with Schabir

Shaik. Shaik allegedly relayed to Thetard a request from Deputy-President Zuma for at least one personal payment of R500,000. On the same day, 30 September 1999, Thomson bought a

block of shares in its own South African subsidiary, Thomson Holdings (SA) from Nkobi, for

the (grossly inflated) figure of R500,000. In mid-2000, ADS acquired a 'black empowerment

partner', Futuristic Business Solutions. Its directors included Defence Minister Modise's

brother in law, Lambert Moloi.30 When the arms deal was concluded, Thomson-owned ADS was also amongst the firms

that benefited. It did not take long for suspicions about it to surface. On 15 September 2000, the Auditor-General submitted a report to parliament identifying irregularities in the

tendering procedures and indicating that the role of ADS was one of the issues in question. On

8 December, Gavin Woods, the IFP-aligned chair of parliament's Standing Committee on

Public Accounts (SCOPA) wrote to President Mbeki calling for a more thorough investigation into the Arms Scandal. On 19 January he got a reply, not from Mbeki, but from Zuma, who

denounced the 'malicious misinformation campaign' against the government. However, the

30 Mail & Guardian, 29 November 2002; Rapport, 1 December 2002; Sunday Times, 15 December 2002 and 16

February 2003; Noseweek, August 2003.


energetic Director of Public Prosecutions, Bulelani Ngcuka became involved in the case, and on 9 October 2001 launched a raid on Schabir Shaik's home and Nkobi Holdings. It

subsequently came to light that Shaik had been in possession of secret government documents

relating to the criteria for the adjudication of the decision on the arms contracts.31

Despite the lack of enthusiasm for the investigation at the top, Ngcuka pushed ahead with

his investigations into the Maharaj-Zuma-Shaik axis. Then, in mid-2003, Mo Shaik and

Maharaj came forward with allegations that Ngcuka had been a spy for the government

during the apartheid years. Breaking with the ANC tradition of resolving disputes in-house, President Mbeki appointed a judicial commission under Judge Hefer into the allegations.

When Mo Shaik and Maharaj appeared before Hefer, their case collapsed ignominiously.

Ngcuka was seen to have been vindicated and the 'spy' allegations appeared as a blatant

attempt to derail the investigation. Ngcuka was however, subsequently removed from his post after voicing the opinion that there was a prima-facie case for prosecuting Zuma.

What is most disturbing about the ANC's response to the arms scandal has been its strong

tendency to place organisational loyalty above probity, and to obstruct and attack institutions

that threaten this priority. In the case of some individuals, this response is driven by naked

self-interest, but more widely one sees here the effects of the solidaristic political culture

described earlier. During 2000, the parliamentary Standing Committee on Public Accounts

played a leading role in publicly raising questions around the arms deal. The committee had

up until that time, under Woods' leadership, preserved a non-partisan character: Andrew

Feinstein, the leading ANC member on the committee, had played an important role in

opening the deal up to scrutiny. When Woods wrote to Mbeki at the end of 2000, he requested the inclusion of the commission under Judge Willem Heath in the inquiry. Heath had been

appointed under Mandela's presidency to a standing commission to investigate corruption. Heath, an Afrikaans-speaker, had been highly effective in his work, and his persistence,

integrity and no-nonsense style had made him something of a folk-hero across the political

spectrum. The one group of people apparently not impressed by Heath, however, was the

Cabinet, which considered him as abrasive and indiscreet. Mbeki not only refused to place Heath on the investigation, but took the opportunity of a constitutional court ruling against the

legality of Heath's appointment (on technical grounds), to remove him from his commission.

The ANC leadership then followed with an attack on Feinstein, who was squeezed out of the

Standing Committee and subsequently left the country in a hurry. The ANC chief whip and

chair of the parliamentary committee in charge of overseeing defence, Tony Yengeni, played a major role in attacking Feinstein. Ironically Yengeni had to resign from these senior

positions when it subsequently emerged that he had accepted a luxury 4x4 vehicle from

another company with interests in the arms deal. Subsequently, the ANC took over the

chairpersonship of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts, which then adopted a much

more partisan orientation.32

The first half of 2005, however, saw remarkable new developments in the case. Schabir

Shaik was brought to trial on charges relating to his part in the arms scandal. In June, he was

convicted, and the court found that there was a 'corrupt relationship' between Zuma and

Shaik. Zuma initially received strong support from the trade unions, a number of ANC

regions, the ANC Youth League and the South African Communist Party, all of whom had

seen him as a future president sympathetic to their concerns. But Mbeki convened a joint

31 Noseweek, August 2003.

32 Sunday Times, 15 December 2002; Lodge, Politics in South Africa, pp. 144-50; J. Sarkin, 'Evaluating the

Constitutional Court's Decision in South African Association of Personal Injury Lawyers v. Heath and Others

In the Context of Crime and Corruption in South Africa', The South African Law Journal, 118, 4 (2003),

pp. 747-71.


sitting of parliament and announced that Zuma would be replaced. Whether it signals a

consistently tougher stand by Mbeki on corruption, remains to be seen. There was perhaps an

element of self-interest: there was no love lost between Mbeki and Zuma. But it was a bold

move, and a striking break with the ANC s ethos of unquestioning loyalty.

Conclusion

There was a high degree of variability in the levels and nature of rent-seeking activities in the

state during the century of white domination in Southern Africa, which lasted from the late

1870s to 1994. Corruption was widespread in the Kruger era, but was substantially contained

by the creation of a modern bureaucracy under Milner. Patronage politics and the facilitation

of rent-seeking activity played a large part in the building of Afrikaner nationalism. But it

only crossed the line into massive overt corruption from the 1970s. The homeland system created a rural politics of corruption, which in many ways took on the features of the

instrumentalised disorder of the Chabal and Daloz 'empty shell' state. In the course of the

political struggle oppositional movements did develop practices, values, and kinds of

networks that were likely to foster some degree of patronage and bad administrative practice once they entered government. When the ANC came to power in 1994 it thus had a very

complex history to cope with.

The central Pretoria-based state had a history of strong rational-bureaucratic organisation, but this had, over time, been severely damaged in terms of its level of professionalism by the

political upheavals it had undergone, and in the last two decades had become notably affected

by corruption. There was no trust by the incoming government in the senior civil servants.

Yet the ANC needed that bureaucracy to govern. The homeland bureaucracy was largely useless as an administrative organisation, but the ANC had to incorporate it into the

mainstream civil service, both because the new government needed the support of the black

middle-class bureaucrats who staffed it, and in order to administer rural areas of the country. The ANC itself brought to the task an enthusiasm and high hopes for the future, but also a

political culture that made it difficult to admit to and tackle corruption problems when they arose. The construction of a new economic elite also created a context in which corruption

was likely to flourish. In this context it is not surprising that corruption questions plagued the

government during the first decade of the new state.

Jonathan Hyslop

Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research (WISER), University of the Witwatersrand,

Johannesburg, South Africa. E-mail: [email protected]

political corruption before and after apartheid

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