‘Kitchen cabinets’ run SA

Commentators, opposition groups and ordinary South Africans underestimate President Jacob Zuma, not simply because he is more brazen, wily and brutal than they expect, but because they reduce him to caricature.

They conceive of Zuma and his allies as a criminal network that has captured the state. This approach obscures the existence of a political project at work to repurpose state institutions to suit a constellation of networks that have been constructed and now span the symbiotic relationship between the constitutional and shadow state. This is akin to a silent coup.

The Zuma-centred power elite has built and consolidated this symbiotic relationship between the constitutional state and the shadow state in order to execute the silent coup. In the process the ANC has been removed from its place as the primary force for transformation in society

At the nexus are a handful of the same individuals and companies connected in one way or another to the Gupta-Zuma family network. The way that this is strategically coordinated constitutes the shadow state.

Well-placed individuals located in the most significant centres of state power (in government, SOEs and the bureaucracy) make decisions about what happens within the constitutional state.

Those, like former Deputy Finance Minister Jonas, ANC MP Vytjie Mentor and former Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan who resist this agenda in one way or another are systematically removed, redeployed to other lucrative positions to silence them, placed under tremendous pressure, or hounded out by trumped up internal and/or external charges and dubious intelligence reports.

This is a world where deniability is valued, culpability is distributed (though indispensability is not taken for granted) and where trust is maintained through mutually binding fear. Unsurprisingly, therefore, the shadow state is not only the space for extra-legal action facilitated by criminal networks, but also where key security and intelligence actions are coordinated.

From about 2012 onwards the Zuma-centred power elite has sought to centralise the control of to eliminate lower-order competitors.

the ultimate prize was control of the National Treasury to gain control of the Financial Intelligence Centre (which monitors illicit flows of finance), the Chief Procurement Office (which regulates procurement and activates legal action against corrupt practices), the Public Investment Corporation (the second largest shareholder on the JSE), the boards of key development finance institutions, and the guarantee system (which is not only essential for making the nuclear deal work, but with a guarantee state entities can borrow from private lenders/banks without parliamentary oversight).

The Cabinet reshuffle in March 2017 made possible this final control of the National Treasury.

At the epicentre of the political project mounted by the Zuma-centred power elite is a rhetorical commitment to radical economic transformation. Unsurprisingly, although the ANC’s official policy documents on radical economic transformation encompass a broad range of interventions that take the National Development Plan as a point of departure, the Zuma-centred power elite emphasises the role of the SOEs, particularly their procurement spend. Eskom and Transnet, in turn, are the primary vehicles for managing state capture, large-scale looting of state resources and the consolidation of a transnationally managed financial resource base, which in turn creates a continuous source of self-enrichment and funding for the power elite and their patronage network.

In short, instead of becoming a new economic policy consensus, radical economic transformation has been turned into an ideological football kicked around by factional political players within the ANC and the alliance in general who use the term to mean different things.

It is now clear that while the ideological focus of the ANC is “radical economic transformation”, in practice Zuma’s presidency is aimed at repurposing state institutions to consolidate the Zuma-centred power elite. Whereas the former appears to be a legitimate long-term vision to structurally transform the economy to eradicate poverty and reduce inequality and unemployment, the latter – popularly referred to as “state capture” – threatens the viability of the state institutions that need to deliver on this long-term vision.

Until recently, the decomposition of state institutions has been blamed on corruption, but we must now recognise that the problem goes well beyond this. Corruption normally refers to a condition where public officials pursue private ends using public means.

While corruption is widespread at all levels and is undermining development, state capture is a far greater, systemic threat. It is akin to a silent coup and must, therefore, be understood as a political project that is given a cover of legitimacy by the vision of radical economic transformation.

The March 2017 Cabinet reshuffle was confirmation of this silent coup; it was the first Cabinet reshuffle that took place without the full prior support of the governing party.

This moves the symbiotic relationship between the constitutional state and the shadow state that emerged after the Polokwane conference in 2007 into a new phase.

The reappointment of Brian Molefe as Eskom’sCEO a few weeks later in defiance of the ANC confirms this trend.

While it is obvious that the highly unequal South African economy needs to be thoroughly transformed, the task now is to how a Zuma-centred power elite has managed to capture key state institutions to repurpose them in ways that subvert the constitutional and legal framework established after 1994.

The clearest and most disturbing indicator is the collapse of the cabinet system as the core of the executive branch of the state.

Cabinet meetings are badly managed and poorly chaired, and they have been informalised. Partly as a result of this, Cabinet decisions are no longer regarded by independentminded professional uncorrupted senior officials in departments as strategically significant. Decisions are only regarded as significant if they have been endorsed by a specific network with reference to the wishes of President Zuma.

When asked to consider an initiative by a network, Zuma invariably supports it, thus diluting the value of his strategic judgment. It is also well-known that the last person to brief the President is what the President will support. Hence the competition to access him just before Cabinet meetings, or key public appearances.

Everyone knows it is easy to say they have Zuma’s support. what really matters is not so much what he personally supports or what Cabinet has resolved, but what a particular network wants to see happen and as such is backed by Zuma.

In other words, Zuma does not support initiatives as such; he anoints particular networks that can then activate initiatives in his name in return for rents. Zuma’s role includes activating actions to penalise those who do not conform (including the use of bogus intelligence reports, cutting off access to rents, removal and sidelining).

Cabinet approval is secured only when needed, and not because there is a wider strategic plan that it sees itself implementing.

Cabinet, moreover, is no longer supported by a strong professional policy support unit like the Policy Coordination and Advisory Service headed by Joel Netshitenze in the Thabo Mbeki era.

When issues come to Cabinet that do need further attention and resolution, Zuma’s preference is to establish ad hoc interministerial committees populated invariably by a group of loyalists and members of the state security establishment.

These committees effectively ratify what the Zuma-anointed networks want to see happen, thus endowing them with a veneer of Cabinet/executive authorisation.

When a committee brings a matter for decision to Cabinet, it is invariably rubberstamped and hardly ever debated. On numerous occasions, issues have been brought to Cabinet for decisions and Cabinet ministers confront the issue for the first time, such as in the closing of the Oakbay accounts.

In these cases, supporting documentation has not been circulated beforehand and it has not been filtered by key agencies (eg the National Treasury, Department of Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation or even a professional specialist unit in the relevant department) to inform the decision.

There is a generally understood assumption that if the issue has come via a member of a particular “in-group” and Zuma supports it in ways that the in-group seems to understand, then the role of Cabinet is to rubberstamp a decision already taken elsewhere.

Cabinet approval of the nuclear deal is a case in point. At no time during the process had a plan been presented to Cabinet in respect of the nuclear deal. The only documentation presented to Cabinet was a nuclear costing presentation by former Finance Minister Nhlanhla Nene – a few hours before he was called by Zuma to a meeting and fired.

In this context, political power in South Africa has fragmented across the state and society, condensing momentarily in fleeting and fluctuating networks, few with formal power, most operating in the shadows and all heavily contested.

In this context of unstable political relations, the Gupta-Zuma nexus has come to be a relatively constant site of authority. It is an attractive one because it can marshal substantial resources and is armed with the capacity to undertake propaganda. In other words, the Guptas serve as “fixers” in a project that is always at risk of spinning out of control.

Saxonwold, however, hosts only one of the “kitchen cabinets” through which political power is exercised. There are others, including the Premier League of provincial barons and networks in the state and police intelligence agencies.

This is an edited extract from the report Betrayal of the promise: how South Africa is being stolen released on Thursday by SA academics led by Professor Mark Swilling of the Centre for Complex Systems in Transition at Stellenbosch University