It is not every day that there are attempts to withdraw an academic paper from the public domain due to its explosive political findings.
A prophetic 2022 paper by New South Institute (NSI) director Ivor Chipkin and co-author Jelena Vidojevic, titled Dangerous Elites, is one such paper — the first in his long career, Chipkin tells the FM.
Drawing on various databases, the paper examined the link between social unrest and internal ANC politics. “Service delivery protests” are tightly wound into internal ANC factional battles and the wrangle over access to state resources, Chipkin and Vidojevic found.
The report says South Africa is entering a phase of “ongoing, violent instability” and a potential explosion of organised crime networks. Chipkin’s research tells the story of the dark side of South African politics, often hidden beneath the veneer of liberation-era sloganeering, buttressed by the once-noble trope of “a better life for all”.
In reality, the “better life” mostly refers to elite politicians and their networks.
The 2022 paper, now set to be published in the Journal of Southern African Studies, argues that since 1994 the ANC had “contained and moderated the elite contestation within the country, keeping it within the boundaries of the democratic system”.
However, from 2007, this contestation became difficult to contain, spilling outside party bounds in the form of social protests. Former president Jacob Zuma sought to contain it by expanding patronage networks to control and manage internal ANC tension, with state capture as an extreme manifestation of this.
“The sharp rise in protests from end-2017 suggests that President Cyril Ramaphosa does not have the same authority over ANC grandees regionally and locally as did Zuma. The ANC also has fewer resources for patronage politics. South Africa is likely to have entered a phase of ongoing, violent instability,” the paper finds.
Chipkin tells the FM that three years on, he has done further work on the study and that its findings hold true, with potentially damaging ramifications if the trend is not arrested.
“I think what is happening is that there’s a much more vigorous contest for resources in the state and for positions in the state, though the ANC can’t allocate them as easily as it used to. Some of those people are moving outside the party and are increasingly collaborating with organised crime, criminal networks,” he says.
It is a trend apparently already visible in the form of the so-called construction mafia, water tanker mafia and many “business forums” — the examples are glaring, from national to provincial and municipal level. The most obvious illustration would be the direct allegation, by KwaZulu-Natal police commissioner Lt-Gen Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi, that police minister Senzo Mchunu was colluding with organised crime networks through an ANC conduit, Brown Mogotsi.
Another possible example which came to light on Monday was how Joburg council chief whip Sithembiso Zungu, an ANC councillor, apparently halted construction projects in his ward, allegedly through extortion and coercion to direct a cut to the local business forum he previously chaired, according to a News24 report.
There’s a much more vigorous contest for resources in the state and for positions in the state, though the ANC can’t allocate them as easily as it used to
— Ivor Chipkin
Two things are happening at once, says Chipkin.
The first is that democracy is consolidating. South Africa’s multiparty system is coming into its own as the 30-year hegemony of the ANC is eroding. Party political competition is becoming more robust.
At the same time, there is a shift in criminal activity towards more organised, politically linked and consolidated networks. This seems partly to be a result of the heavy politicisation of the South African Police Service, from former commissioner Jackie Selebi onward under successive ANC-led administrations, which led to the weakening of detective services and the capture of crime intelligence and state security under Zuma.
“The criminal networks emerging now are not just gangsters, but gangsters who are strongly linked to political networks,” says Chipkin.
The ANC, under Ramaphosa and also potentially under any future leader, will perhaps not be able to contain the contest for access to state resources, partly because of the party’s diminishing electoral support.
“On the one hand, it’s great that we’ve got a consolidating democracy. But on the law and order front, social stability, political stability — things are looking quite difficult,” says Chipkin.
“The ability of the ANC to allocate people at all levels of the state is declining, and declining fast. To get those resources, especially if you’re someone who doesn’t have a career independent of politics, independent qualifications, independent experience, I think many people are seeing organised crime as a route to sustaining and maintaining those resources.”
This trend is particularly worrying due to the weakness of the criminal justice system.
The descent into a full-blown gangster state can be arrested and reversed through the rapid professionalisation of the public service, Chipkin argues, coupled with the rejuvenation of the police, the National Prosecuting Authority and intelligence services.
It is a tall order — but there is hope in the form of amendments to the Public Service Act, passed by parliament in February and making their way through the National Council of Provinces. The amendments, which Chipkin’s NSI has been agitating for, could buttress the state against the insidious influence of party politics, whether that party is the ANC or any other.
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