Failure by central state has pushed SA into a slow decline similar to Argentina after WW2

In many townships, gangs form parallel states — controlling resources, setting “laws” and forcing ordinary citizens to pay “taxes” to them in their “jurisdictions”. Some organised groupings, such as the taxi industry, also operate as parallel states, generating their own income, following their own rules and meting out their own justice.

We are increasingly seeing frustrated citizens take the law into their own hands because of the failure of the official state and unaddressed corruption.

Up to now failure by the central state has pushed SA into a slow decline similar to the backslide Argentina experienced after World War 2. However, the danger is that if the breakdown of the rule of law is not arrested, SA may depart from this Argentinalike decline to even more terrifying scenarios.

The one is Latin American-style full state collapse, when parallel states competing with the official state, combined with corruption and the breakdown of the social order on so many fronts, cause the eventual implosion of the whole state.

In many such failed Latin American states, leaders and groups in control of the national state are frequently violently pushed out, either through organised opposition by forces operating parallel states or by coups often using the official state’s failures as a pretence to do so.

A more recent example of thiswas when president Evo Morales of Bolivia had to flee his country late last year after it disintegrated in chaos following a disputed election, with different organised groups, ranging from political to criminal, not necessarily working together, using popular anger at corruption, mismanagement and the flawed election to take control of the central state itself.

Another scenario is the Lebanon one, where citizens rise up violently for prolonged periods and recently pushed out the country’s corrupt dominant political elite, which had controlled the government since the country’s 15-year civil war ended in 1990.

The other trajectory is what Cosatu’s general secretary, Bheki Ntshalintshali, recently labelled a “mafia state”, where corrupt leaders and groups become entrenched in power, not only in their parallel states but at the level of the central state.

It is crucial that President Cyril Ramaphosa take on the illegal parallel states; bring to book the assortment of powerful, connected and untouchable corrupt strongmen and women; enforce law and order equitably, not only on powerless ordinary citizens, as is the case now; and make the official state more efficient and honest to prevent a descent into total chaos.