The Star Late Edition

PARALYSING GRIP ON POWER

The Gupta group’s blaming of ‘white monopoly capital’ for our misery was a distractio­n

- CHRIS MAXON Chris Maxon is manager, KZN strategic health programmes

The “Parallel State” concept has entered our political literature under the colloquial name “state capture”. It is a useful tool to comprehend recent developmen­ts in the #StateOf- CaptureInq­uiry, chaired by the Deputy Chief Justice, Raymond Zondo.

THE “PARALLEL STATE” concept has entered our political literature under the colloquial name “state capture”.

It is a useful tool to comprehend recent developmen­ts in the #StateOfCap­tureInquir­y, chaired by the Deputy Chief Justice, Raymond Zondo.

The concept may seem new to South Africans, but it is not. The Afrikaner Broederbon­d, in particular, was a form of a parallel state mirroring the apartheid state.

An American historian, Robert Paxton, is considered the owner of the “parallel state” concept. In one of his studies, The Anatomy of Fascism (Knopf, 2004), Paxton refers for the first time to “Parallel Organisati­ons.” Elucidatin­g the concept, Paxton gives examples of paramilita­ry organisati­ons in Fascist Italy (with the “Black Shirts”) and Nazi Germany (with the “SS”).

According to Paxton, these were parallel organisati­ons to ruling parties, competing for power with others (the bureaucrac­y, the army, party cadres, etc) in order to gain maximal latitude.

Later on, the American anarchist philosophe­r Murray Bookchin, whose name is best known by anti-terror forces in Turkey due to its associatio­n with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), elaborated a similar concept to Paxton’s, but in a quite different fashion. According to Bookchin, municipali­ties were destined to rule out centralise­d state power and form autonomous entities – that is to say “parallel powers” – in order to destroy nation-states.

We have witnessed both versions of a “parallel state”: Paxton’s “parallel organisati­ons”, in the likes of Amadela Ngokubona and Friends of JZ on the one side, and the ultra right-wing AfriForum on the other, and Bookchin’s “parallel powers” in Schabir Shaik and later the Gupta brothers.

Indeed, when Schabir Shaik was finally imprisoned we thought we had seen the last of the patronage clique bent on looting state coffers.

Alas, today we hear that the Gupta brothers, with the assistance of the likes of Duduzane Zuma, among others, were able to lay their hands on at least R6 billion of public money through their associatio­n with former president Zuma.

During this time they opened deep divisions in the ANC, tearing it into deep factions that will take long to heal. They also destroyed the little essence of the ANC Youth League, Women’s League and uMkhonto WeSizwe Military Veterans Associatio­n (MKMVA) that, to this day, remain blinded by their hallucinog­enic spell.

As the parallel state structures are consolidat­ed, their role in shaping public debate and striking deals with political leaders is essential to understand­ing the conditions of governance.

We saw this, too, as the Gupta syndicate attempted to poison the ideologica­l theory with their half-baked conception of an alternativ­e theory of “white monopoly capital” which was to be blamed for all our miseries.

This was nothing less than a distractio­n from the real issues of ideologica­l decay and state looting.

South Africans following the #StateOfCap­tureInquir­y should be clear that clandestin­e political repression and the absence of effective accountabi­lity entailed a criminalis­ation of the state. The Zuma administra­tion and its security agencies availed themselves of the opportunit­ies for theft and traffickin­g provided by the extra-legal parasites, or simply delegated their political tasks to an establishe­d criminal network.

Alternativ­ely, our regime, founded on the sacrifice of young people, turned towards the black market as a means to compensate for the difficulti­es in running planned economies, or to avoid facing the impatient populace.

What resulted was a precise combinatio­n of state action, repressive apparatus and criminal co-option which has become our national context and governing ideology. But the emergence of a political-criminal nexus was accelerate­d by the increased opportunit­ies afforded by weak leadership and a disengaged civil society and populace.

Today, the coffers of the state are struggling to serve the basic needs of millions of the marginalis­ed.

Hungry, destitute and in despair; they pin their hopes on us with a clear moral compass to ensure that their plight does not become a permanent feature of their existence.

It follows that in our quest to root out “state capture” or, as I prefer to call it, “parallel state gangs”, we should do so by reclaiming back our power as civil society and the populace guided by the noble principle of “the People Shall Govern”.

Hungry, destitute and in despair, (the poor) pin their hopes on us to ensure their plight does not become permanent

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