South Africa was one of the countries researched by political science professor Yuen Yuen Ang for her book China’s Gilded Cage: The Paradox of Economic Boom and Vast Corruption. She suggests that, like China’s, South Africa’s corruption is dominated by “access money” — a form of corruption that sees “rewards offered by elite capitalists to powerful officials in exchange for exclusive, lucrative privileges”.
She argues that in China, “access money” has been highly conducive to growth and the building of infrastructure, because corruption is about access to investment opportunities and incentives, not about steering overpriced tenders to political allies or friends for kickbacks.
In short, the incentive environment for Chinese politicians and senior officials is aligned with growth. Why has this situation in South Africa not led to growth and development, as it has in China?
An answer lies in the failure of the South African state after the end of apartheid to bureaucratise properly.
Even if infrastructure projects are awarded corruptly, China can still rely on autonomous and professional administrations to bring them to fruition. This is not the case in SA, where executive interference in the administrative branch of government has destabilised many departments, agencies and state companies and burdened them with unsuitable, frequently incompetent senior managers and staff. Hence, corruptly awarded contracts are also poorly implemented or not implemented at all.
Unlike in China, where corruption focused on the extraction of private rents while leaving the underlying administration largely intact and professional, in South Africa “access money” requires the subversion of the entire political-administrative nexus. In contrast to China, South Africa is a democracy in which political leaders, even when their office affords them power and wide discretion, are subject to constitutional, regulatory and legal constraints.
For powerful political leaders to accept bribes or access money from ambitious capitalists to facilitate projects, they have no option but to break and subvert the very administrations that they must later count on to work effectively. Access capital, far from leaving the bureaucracy intact, necessarily subverts it, undermining the very infrastructure and development projects that it facilitates.
In places like China, “oligarchs” (more correctly plutocrats) have been catalysts of development. In South Africa, democratic institutions constrain the move towards oligarchy. State capture under these conditions is driven into the civil service itself where it is less in the public eye, eating away at the very integrity of the state like an acid and weakening the administrative capacity of government departments and agencies. Hence it better resembles a coup d’état in the bureaucracy than a situation of corruption.
At the end of 2017 when Cyril Ramaphosa was elected president of the ANC and subsequently of South Africa, there was much hope for a “new dawn”. Many looked forward to the arrest and prosecution of those responsible for “state capture” and to initiatives to rebuild institutions crashed during the Zuma years. Four years later there has been some movement on these fronts, though it is slow with results few and far between.
Like his predecessor, Ramaphosa is beholden to an idea of the ANC as much more than a political party in a plural, constitutional state. Instead, the ANC believes itself to occupy a special place in history to lead South African society. It will fulfil its destiny in this regard to the extent that it is able to maintain its unity and its focus. As such, Ramaphosa is deeply invested in preserving the unity of the organisation and of delaying or even paying only lip service to initiatives that would, inevitably, provoke further dissent. Even if he is re-elected as party leader in December, it is unlikely the momentum for reform will come from his government or from the ANC.
Even if infrastructure projects are awarded corruptly, China can still rely on autonomous and professional administrations to bring them to fruition
The weakening of the ANC electorally has increased the number of councils now under opposition rule. There is growing evidence that the ANC will not be able to form a national government alone after 2024. To the extent that the popularity/unpopularity of parties is linked to their performance or expected performance in government, the growing unpredictability of the political scene might focus attention on the mechanics of government. In other words, opposition parties may become eager to see reforms in the architecture of government.
There are signs, moreover, in the health sector that civil servants there are beginning to speak up about the appalling conditions in hospitals. In 2017 an embryonic movement of civil servants emerged to oppose the venality of the Zuma regime. Potentially, civil servants themselves could become drivers of change. Furthermore, the Constitutional Court has recently been elaborating a jurisprudence which, in the name of protecting and developing socio-economic rights, authorises courts to involve themselves in the operations of government departments, agencies and municipalities.
The business sector, whose enterprises are often casualties of poor services and deteriorating infrastructure, is increasingly organised and vocal. In July 2021, businesses in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal faced days of looting and burning as contestation in the ANC haemorrhaged into the streets. There is a growing urgency in these quarters that “something must be done”. The argument here is that “something” must be reforming the architecture of government.
Putting aside our moral and political disgust, the evidence from China and elsewhere is that corruption of a certain kind sometimes facilitates development, even if over the long term it weakens institutions. Yet in South Africa, with similar patterns of corruption to those in China, this has not been the experience. The difference seems to reside in the autonomy and merit of China and South Africa’s respective civil services. In China, unlike in South Africa, public administrations are sufficiently capable and merit-based that they can successfully implement projects, even when they are the products of corruption.
Putting aside our moral and political disgust, the evidence from China and elsewhere is that corruption of a certain kind sometimes facilitates development, even if over the long term it weakens institutions
Why is the South African civil service so incapable?
First, under various ANC governments SA has not had a developmental coalition. It has had governments that only pay lip service to these issues because the focus has been on securing the ANC’s control over all areas of the state. As a result there has been no strong motivation to build development capability in the public administration.
Second, the ANC deliberately politicised public administration. In the early years of the transition when the party functioned more or less as a unified entity, executive authority over appointments sometimes saw talented people deployed to government. After 2007, growing and intensifying contestation in the party was transferred to the civil service, rendering departments and companies unstable and making the pursuit and maintenance of office the raison d’etre of public service.
These factors have devastated the administrative capacity of government departments, agencies, state companies and municipalities.
Taken together, the challenges of government are largely political. They are not primarily caused by the low moral character of South African civil servants or by their especially low skills base. There are tens of thousands of capable people in departments and elsewhere in government. They should not have to suffer the slings and arrows of simplistic analyses. The fundamental problem lies in the fact that after 1994 the ANC reproduced features of the apartheid civil service by refusing to rationalise it. This is the current challenge, to complete the transition from apartheid. The civil service in South Africa needs to be bureaucratised, that is, constituted as an autonomous organisation on the basis of merit and subject to strong democratic accountability.
• Chipkin is director of the Government and Public Policy (GAPP) think tank
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