GARETH VAN ONSELEN: ‘State capture’ as religious fundamentalism

State capture, the dramatic and foreboding narrative that has swept up SA, is starting to mirror a kind of religious fundamentalism in its fervour. Essentially binary in nature, it has the effect of reducing public analysis down to one, all-encompassing and almost teleological explanation. As a result, the great risk inherent to it is that it makes us more obtuse, not insightful.

What are the characteristics of religious fundamentalism? One can point to series of core features. There is a prime mover, to which all wickedness can be traced. In the other direction, a benevolent counterforce, served by those opposed to any malevolent threat to their power and influence.

Those locked into this spiritual war are absolute in their belief. Thus, one either opposes them and the narrative they drive or one supports them and becomes a devoted follower in turn. But one way or the other, they would have it that the world is split absolutely into two. And the price one pays for denying their story is damnation, for that act is itself sacrilege.

The consequence is that everything — every act, statement, ambiguity, prediction, consequence, possibility and fact — is made to fit this story. Likewise, every person is assigned a place, for or against, in it. As it is the truth, it is definitive and absolute in nature. Thus, it must follow than anything and everything can be explained by it: all things can be traced back to the prime mover.

The backdrop to this is a golden age, somewhere in the past, and the motivation for the fight is the re-establishment of this former glory. It is used as a framing device, almost always romanticised and idealised. Where this golden age stopped exactly, no one can say for sure. All that is known is that its like has not been seen for some time, and that it is cut off from the here and now by a bulwark of historical decay. It therefore also serves a powerful comparative purpose, as everything can be held up and measured against its imagined moral purity.

This sort of absolutism infects the accompanying language, which in turns becomes fundamentalist in nature. The enemy and their agents are described as profoundly evil, their deeds as catastrophically bad. They are juxtaposed with the good, often described as heroic, entirely virtuous and beyond sin.

Any one person can switch instantaneously between these two roles.

If one moves from good to bad, a person’s past becomes their present, as every previous indiscretion is used to define them contemporarily. If one moves from bad to good, a person’s past is instantaneously forgotten; every indiscretion forgiven, overlooked or downplayed as insignificant. Conversion, real or imagined, is either redemption or damnation, and absolute. No one is ambiguous in this grand narrative: you are good or bad, never both.

Believers boast identifiers — phrases or icons — that serve to signal their position to others, so that their role might not be mistaken. They join together, in mob-like fashion, to denigrate and disparage those who do not conform. Their outlook is an oath, to which they pledge allegiance and from which they claim their authority flows.

All this is fostered politically by an environment prone to nationalistic and collectivist thought. Fundamentalists thrive in this kind of atmosphere for it engenders binary thinking and the disaggregation of people into definitive groups, archetypal and total in their effect on one’s character, once assigned a place. These two things feed off one another to enforce duality.

How the ANC institutionalised corruption

Students of the ANC’s organisational culture can point to a number of key decisions that have helped augment corruption as part of its ethos. One could expound on these at great length but two in particular are relevant here.

The first is the policy of cadre deployment — the practice, formally in 1997, of ensuring that those loyal to the party are positioned throughout society to deliver to the ANC control over all "levers of power". In formalising it, the party did not distinguish independent institutions from those inherently political in nature. Everything, from the public broadcaster to the judiciary, to chapter nine institutions, were to be brought under the ANC’s direct control.

Programmes such as black economic empowerment (BEE) soon followed and, over the subsequent decade-and-a-half, the government tender transformed into the epicentre for almost any and all state corruption

When the problems with this policy were first brought to the public’s attention, specifically by the Democratic Party, they were derided and dismissed as "McCarthyist". The party was, however, proven right. Time and consequence has now brought most analysts round.

Today, cadre deployment has devolved from a way of enforcing hegemonic control, under Mbeki, to a kind of chaotic patronage based system, designed primarily to secure factional interests and to access public resources for personal benefit.

The second key decision was also made at the ANC’s 1997 Mafikeng conference, when the party adopted a new approach to fundraising.

Historically the ANC had relied heavily on huge donations from foreign allies (often deeply compromised individuals), but the constraints of formal democracy had slowly dried up that particular well and so the party was forced to adapt.

Outgoing treasurer-general Makhenkesi Stofile put it like this: "There were a number of options [available to the ANC]. One was the National Party option, which formed companies and gave them contracts, which produced a steady basis of income. We didn’t think that would be a good thing to do. We then considered joint ventures and also thought that they would not be viable and would be the source of conflict. We opted for the role of facilitators for black business in the country. There are black businesses whom we have been able to turn to when we’re in trouble."

Programmes such as black economic empowerment (BEE) soon followed and, over the subsequent decade-and-a-half, the government tender transformed into the epicentre for almost any and all state corruption. The problem became so acute that long before the age of Zuma, former ANC secretary-general Kgalema Motlanthe would say in 2007: "This rot is across the board. It’s not confined to any level or any area of the country. Almost every project is conceived because it offers opportunities for certain people to make money."

He continued: "A great deal of the ANC’s problems are occasioned by this. There are people who want to take it over so they can arrange for the appointment of those who will allow them possibilities for future accumulation."

Mbeki too, late in the day, came to realise the nature of the monster he had created. As early as 2005, he had warned about the ANC’s tendency towards corruption. "What we do in this regard will define whether our organisation, the ANC, continues to maintain its noble character as a servant of all the people of SA, or degenerates into an ignoble, blood-sucking and corrupt parasite, an enemy of an immensely heroic people," he said.

Nevertheless, Stofile’s approach lives on and today the blood-sucking and corrupt parasite has been gorging itself sick for well on 15 years.

"Everything you touch will multiply," Zuma said in 2013. "I’ve always said that a wise businessperson will support the ANC … because supporting the ANC means you’re investing very well in your business."

And so the symbiotic relationship is maintained: the ANC using cadre deployment to control procurement and the pretense of redistribution to reward those in the private sector loyal to it, then relying on those same people to fund the organisation.

While patronage and factionalism under Zuma has insured certain vested interests are disproportionately pandered to and facilitated, likewise, while the extent of the problem has now mutated into some extreme aberration of its original form (mirrored by obscene amounts of money changing hands), this has been standard operating procedure for the ANC since 1997. It is how the ANC survives.

State capture as a false dichotomy

Into this context the Gupta family arrived. Shrewd businessmen, they understood that money was to be made through state contracts and that state-owned entities, responsible for the biggest contracts, was where they should direct their attention, should they wish to benefit. They have been remarkably successful.

But while the scale on which their racket operates is staggering, they are by no means an anomaly. There are a hundred Gupta families, operating on a thousand different levels, from local to national government, each with its own personal agenda, each with its fangs deep into a different sized vein.

Because the Gupta family seems to enjoy a particularly close relationship with Zuma (together forming "Zupta", the prime mover) and because Zuma is so widely abhorred in the mainstream media, this particular relationship has, however, come to subsume all others, both in prominence and importance.

In truth, however, aside from the scale of their enterprise, there is nothing remarkable about the Guptas. They follow the same model so many others who drink from this poisoned chalice have adopted: they seek to control tenders and state contracts, to their favour. They have followed that desire through to the highest level, even so far as ministerial appointments. But that, really, is all. They do not wish to control the state. They wish only to "win" business.

The greatest victim of "state capture" is a proper analysis of the ANC and how it operates

It is remarkable how much has been forgotten with the advent of the Gupta family. Chancellor House, for example, still operates under the radar. It had its sight on Eskom, in exactly the same way the Guptas did, and it has been around since 2006. There was the "Oilgate" scandal in 2005, where about R15m was channelled via PetroSA through a company called Imvume to the ANC, to help pay the party’s 2004 election costs. The kind of business the Gupta family practises is well-established and the ANC has been playing this game for considerable time.

(There is a strong argument to be made that in 1997, the ANC’s intention was always to adopt "the National Party option" or that its "role as facilitators for black business" was nothing more than a euphemism for it. Either way, the difference today is merely technical.)

The consequence of the dominance of "state capture" as a narrative is that a false dichotomy has been created, where all evil can be traced back to Zuma and Gupta family. It is simply not true: one could remove both, and the system and organisational culture that has allowed both to so entrench themselves would remain. The greatest victim of "state capture" is a proper analysis of the ANC and how it operates. And the result of that is a widespread belief that, should both be removed, the situation would be allowed to revert to normal.

Nothing could be further from the truth. "State capture", if one is to really buy into that concept, was first articulated by the ANC in 1997, in its policy of cadre deployment. If its core purpose was to be articulated today it would be viciously rounded upon. It only got away with it because of the uncritical belief it was entirely benevolent and its programme ostensibly morally indistinguishable from the "imperative of transformation". But it remains ANC policy and, through it, the party seeks to feed the insatiable appetite its own programme of action constitutes, a problem compounded by its collapse, as it has come to increasingly rely on nothing more than money to shore up its electoral prospects.

One can see the consequences of this total and fundamental belief in state capture as the defining narrative of South African politics everywhere. All roads lead to it. Individuals are assigned positions in relation to it; events — often mistakenly — are interpreted exclusively through that lens; the ANC’s internal politics is analysed primarily as a response to it and government policy is understood as reflection of it. It is all-consuming.

Against that background, and underpinning it, is a golden age. Never specifically defined but augmented by the likes of the ANC veterans — framed as representatives of its innate virtue — the assumption is that there was a time, before Zuma, when the ANC was untainted by the disease that has now eaten away at its soul. If not under Mbeki, often used today as a helpful crutch against which to judge Zuma, then Mandela, the benevolent force that represents everything the ‘Zuptas’ are not. The Arms Deal, ground zero for corruption in SA, is another unhelpful obstacle to this romantised past we have assigned to obscurity.

One could take a broader view still, the recent publication of Apartheid Guns and Money, demonstrates that nationalism, whatever party its contemporary political surrogate, has a way of subverting the state and the private sector to its own ends.

The likes of Pravin Gordhan, the quintessential illustration of a desire to frame anyone person as either a hero or villain, has benefited immensely from the state capture story. Likewise, the many others in the ANC, complicit in everything outlined above to one degree or another. We are told they too today walk on water, in order to drive the narrative further. Ambiguity and perspective are usually the first things to go when in the grips of some fundamental explanation.

Institutions, complex and multifaceted, each with a myriad representatives, pursuing an endless number of outcomes, are reduced to one-dimensional factories, their inhabitants, robots. Politics, too, is reduced to an overly simplified story, binary in nature, in which ever speech, province, act or rebuttal is understood as a response to state capture. The story cannot be denied.

A need to refocus

While it is true that Gupta family and their influence on public business is a profound problem that warrants a great deal of urgent attention and scrutiny, it is important to understand their circle of influence is not unique. They are the particular manifestation of a sickness that now has completely enveloped the ANC. Properly diagnosing that sickness requires a reversion to base principles. Do that and, inevitably, you will be taken back to 1997 and the internal political culture of an origination that has never properly transitioned into a formal political party.

There are a thousand overlapping circles of influence in the ANC today; some bigger than others, but all allowed to flourish not because of Zuma, but because of the ANC's policy and practice. Zuma did not invent corruption, he merely perfected it.

Inherent to the idea of state capture is a certain amount of misdirection. The state was always to be captured by the ANC.

It doesn’t matter who leads the ANC. Until the policy of cadre deployment is rescinded and it is no longer the objective to bend all state institutions to the ANC’s will, and until the ANC is able properly to raise money, without having to abuse state resources to that end, corruption and the abuse of state tenders is not going to end. People need to understand that.

The problem, at the heart of SA’s current condition, is the ANC. It has provided a formal structure whereby the ever-present base impulses towards corruption in any party have been afforded the pretense of legitimacy. That is how a state is corrupted.

The desperation that has SA in its grip, a hysteria that rightly has Jacob Zuma at its heart, has caused the country to adopt a semireligious attitude to possible redemption. When state capture is arrested, the golden age will return. In truth, follow this path to its logical conclusion and the result is not a reformed ANC, only a less obvious model for maladministration and graft.

You can treat the symptoms or the cause, but panic has resulted in the two being confused. It is the host towards which attention should be turned.