Journal of Southern African Studies

Political Corruption: Before and after Apartheid

Author(s): Jonathan Hyslop
Source: Journal of Southern African Studies, Vol. 31, No. 4, Fragile Stability: State and
Society in Democratic South Africa (Dec., 2005), pp. 773-789
Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.
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Journal of Southern African Studies, Volume 31, Number 4, December 2005 V\
Routledge
&Francis
| % Taylor 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
behaviour, and corruption as such. Second the article
seeking patron-client relationships
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 theformer 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.
= 5048
za/da/Site/Eng/News/Article.asp/ID
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 tomeasure the degree of corruption in the old and new orders, itwould 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' a central part. The moment of scandal
plays
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' inmodernity 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 theMbeki 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 inModern South Africa' (seminar paper, WISER, 2003).
4 Lodge, 'Political Corruption', p. 187.
5 J.B. Thompson, Political Scandal: Power and Visibility in theMedia 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
... Rents include not
accepted given alternative opportunities just monopoly profits, but
also and transfers organised through the political mechanism:
subsidies 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 donations or recommendations for instance that do not
personal
involve rules or But in contexts of fierce conflicts over scarce resources,
violating procedures.
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).
776 Journal of Southern African Studies

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 or in order to coercive power over individuals or groups.
gain, gain

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

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

process.
debates on risk and trust, and particularly Giddens'10
The 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

S.M. Lipset and G.S.

9 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).
 Political Corruption: Before and After Apartheid 111

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 and sold and there was no such as
openly bought thing
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
theMafia 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
- and in this
development. They contend 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).
778 Journal of Southern African Studies

South Korean case as a comparative reference point here: a country with a bad reputation for
but a of economic success. In their view, the contrasts run like
corruption spectacular history
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; inAfrica, corruption is fairly open and accepted, in Korea it is
relatively clandestine; inAfrica 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 ismainly horizontal with limited vertical networks; iswidespread 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?
Iwill 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
 Political Corruption: Before and After Apartheid 779

their paradigm would seem to be that, despite the authors' specific denials, itmight 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 manner.
pre-modern
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.
780 Journal of Southern African Studies

'concessions'; the right to manufacture or distribute a particular category of goods within

the Transvaal. These went to entrepreneurs who were toward the
inevitably well-disposed

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 aWhitehall 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 theMilner 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 scale than had been in South Africa. There was a
larger previously attempted
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
officialsand 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.
 Political Corruption: Before and After Apartheid 781

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 themost dire apartheid measures were carried through with punctilious legal formalism,
and the actions of civil servants were scrutinised by their superiors with this inmind.

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.
782 Journal of Southern African Studies

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, ifmisplaced, 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 tomanipulate 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 themoney 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 tomake 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.

 Political Corruption: Before and After Apartheid 783

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, more as a
acting
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
784 Journal of Southern African Studies

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, itwas 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
... and a
with 'corruption, fraud, bribery, kickbacks 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 itwas 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 inAfrica: 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).
 Political Corruption: Before and After Apartheid 785

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, itwould 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 theMinistry 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 itwas 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
786 Journal of Southern African Studies

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 toMoleah's conduct, Bhengu created a new council
that was more sympathetic toMoleah.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 inMalaysia in the 1980s would seem to have considerable
application to the South African case: although 'ostensibly favouring the politically dominant
but economically ... such intervention has
deprived indigenous community 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.
 Political Corruption: Before and After Apartheid 787

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 themid-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 andMac Maharaj, underground leader of the
ANC s last military campaign, Operation Vula, andMinister 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
a
provision to 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. Inmid-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 amore 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.
 788 Journal of Southern African Studies

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 ismost 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 toMbeki 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 amuch
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.
 Political Corruption: Before and After Apartheid 789

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 amodern 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 thatmade 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: hyslopj@wiser.wits.ac.za