Tag Archives: Jacob Zuma

Guest Post: Will the Biden Administration Help South Africa Escape Capture?

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Today’s Guest Post is by Nicole Fritz, a South African public interest lawyer and executive director the Helen Suzman Foundation, a non-partisan think-tank dedicated to promoting liberal, democratic values and human rights in post-apartheid South Africa.

President Biden’s meeting Friday with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa offers a prime opportunity to show the Administration is serious about its new global anticorruption policy. Issued last December, the Administration promises a raft of new initiatives to not only crackdown on corruption at home but to help democratic, reform-minded regimes root out corruption that they cannot do on their own. President Ramaphosa’s government qualifies on all counts. Where it could best use assistance is in unraveling an American company’s role in the efforts of Ramaphosa’s predecessor, Jacob Zuma, to rob the country blind. 

During his nine-year rule, Zuma sought to “capture the state,” to remake South Africa’s fledgling young democratic government into a machine to enrich himself, his family, and his friends. No sooner did he take office in 2009 then he began stacking key government-owned enterprises with cronies and accomplices and purging the public service of professional, independently-minded civil servants.  He was finally forced from office after widespread public protest and coordinated efforts of civil society, those few remaining independent state agencies, and reformers within his own party.

In one of his last desperate bids to quell discontent and remain in office, Zuma established the Judicial Commission of Inquiry into Allegations of State Capture, Corruption and Fraud in the Public Sector. That Commission has defined the Ramaphosa presidency and the Commission’s several-thousand-page report, completed in June, reveals in astonishing detail just how far Zuma and accomplices extended their reach into the inner-workings of the government in pursuit of personal riches.

An especially damning chapter (here) recounts the role of the Boston management consulting firm Bain & Company in the state capture scheme.

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South African Court Slaps Down Attack on Corruption Prosecutor

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Early Wednesday a South African judge ruled that former President Jacob Zuma’s attacks on the prosecutor leading the case him were baseless and that Zuma’s trial on corruption charges proceed forthwith. Zuma had claimed prosecutor William Downer’s conduct in pursuing the case was so egregious — running the gamut from the commission of serious crimes, to breaches of ethics, to intimations of racial animus — that the charges against him must be dismissed. Or, at the least, Downer be removed from the case and trial therefore delayed indefinitely while a new prosecutor was found.  

In seeing through Zuma’s desperate attempt to derail the case, and standing up to the still powerful former president, Judge Piet Koen provided a model judges everywhere should follow.  When Zuma raised the unfounded, scurrilous attacks on the prosecutor, Koen ordered they be aired without delay.  Upon sifting through the evidence, he promptly issued a scholarly 109-page opinion finding that not one of the allegations withstood scrutiny and that there was therefore no basis to find Downer was not a fair-minded, independent prosecutor and hence no reason Zuma would not receive a fair trial if Downer remained on the case.

Today’s 61-page decision came in response to that earlier decision. Zuma had requested that the trial be halted while he appealed it.  In again a scholarly and carefully written decision, Koen knocked down the legal arguments offered in support of an appeal while reiterating the absence of any facts showing Downer guilty of misconduct or bias.

Zuma has done his best to pressure the judge into throwing out or delaying the case, with hundreds of supporters crowding into the courthouse and surrounding grounds at his every appearance to let their views be known and with some issuing not so veiled threats against the judge. Koen could have easily caved, finding merit to the claims or a way to put off the trial for months if not years.

That he did not and that he instead set the trial for this April stands in marked contrast to the way attacks on Nigerian, Zambian, and Italian prosecutors have been handled (here, here, and here). Rather than standing up for them, judges, justice ministry officials, and even fellow prosecutors stood aside after the attacks were launched with some collaborating with the attackers. If corrupt officials and their accomplices are to face justice, Judge Koen’s response must become the standard when those prosecuting them come under attack.  

Guest Post: How President Ramaphosa Can Begin Rebuilding Public Trust in South African Government

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Today’s guest post is from Larry Kirsch, an economist who is currently the Managing Partner of IMR Health Economics.

The South African government, like many governments around the world, faces daunting challenges due to the combination of the Covid-19 pandemic, economic collapse, and civil unrest. Addressing these problems requires not only decisive action by leaders, but also a sufficient reservoir of public trust. Without such trust, a leader’s call for civic sacrifice and solidarity may not receive the desired response. Unfortunately, South African citizens do not currently have much trust in their government. The leading international survey of trustworthiness, the Edelman Trust Barometer, reported this past January that trust in government among South Africans ranked lowest among the 28 countries surveyed—lower than Russia and Argentina and well below India and China.

Part of this lack of trust is due to chronically stressed economic conditions, as well as extreme structural inequalities. But citizens’ trust has been further undermined by South Africa’s endemic corruption. The corruption of former President Jacob Zuma and his closest cronies (especially the rapacious Gupta family) was well-documented in a a November 2016 report issued by the Office of the Public Protector, then headed by the highly-regarded Thuli Madonsela. That report, entitled The State of Capture, also emphasized the burden of corruption on everyday citizens, documenting, for example, how corruption had contributed to the dysfunctions in vital public services and state owned enterprises.

Will the relatively new government of President Cyril Ramaphosa be able to galvanize trust and obtain the degree of public support needed to deal with the grave threats facing South Africa? On the one hand, President Ramaphosa’s public statements, especially since the outbreak of the coronavirus in South Africa in early March, have been decisive, inclusive, and progressive, particularly in relation to the call for solidarity and the government’s commitment to the apportionment of healthcare, work, food, and other public support on the basis of need. But if President Ramaphosa truly wishes to begin a ”radical” restructuring process based on principles of fairness, social cohesion, and inclusive growth, he will have to deal squarely with the persistence of the culture of corruption, as well as with broader concerns about government openness and public accountability. And his stirring speeches have so far not included much information on how his administration intends to tackle these crucial issues.

One important element of a comprehensive strategy to rebuild the South African government’s integrity—and with it citizen trust in that government—would be for President Ramaphosa to personally back robust implementation of South Africa’s Promotion of Access to Information Act (PAIA). Continue reading →

The South African Turnover: Anticorruption or Political Consolidation?

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Last February, South African President Jacob Zuma—who has been dogged for years by credible allegations of corruption and other serious malfeasance in office—finally resigned under pressure.  In April, only a couple of months later, Zuma went on trial; he faces 16 counts of corruption, fraud, money laundering, and racketeering related to arms deals that took place in the 1990s (before his election as president). Zuma fought these charges for years, but now it seems as if his political cover has run out.

Yet the story behind Zuma’s corruption trial may go deeper than Zuma’s past bad behavior finally catching up with him. It’s important also to note the political context. Zuma’s resignation came at the urging of his party, the African National Congress (ANC), after Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa secured the leadership of the ANC in December 2017, igniting a power struggle that led to a planned vote of no confidence, brokered by Ramaphosa. Zuma resigned in order to avoid a vote he was likely to lose, and Deputy President Ramaphosa immediately took over. In his first few months in office, Ramaphosa has been shaking up the political establishment, but is himself also the subject of multiple corruption allegations. This leads one to question: Should the retrial of Zuma be understood principally as part of Ramaphosa strategy for political consolidation? More generally, has South Africa’s recent political shakeup set the country on a course for a better, less corrupt future?

Many have expressed precisely this hope, but I’m more pessimistic. True, President Ramaphosa has acknowledged South Africa’s serious corruption problem and pledged to address it, and that is in some ways welcome news. But Ramaphosa is not an immaculate outsider with the capacity to reform from a position of moral authority. He is a deep insider, enmeshed in the corrupt system he has pledged to reform. He has profited heavily from the relationship between the ANC and the wealthy (mostly white) elites, and his rise to power came not from a landslide toward a new party, but from a successful destabilization of the ANC from within. Moreover, while Ramaphosa’s government is cracking down on corruption, its investigations seem carefully and narrowly targeted, focusing mainly on those who might be a political threat or rival. Therefore, I worry that Ramaphosa may prove to be equally corrupt, and the latest string of crackdowns may be nothing more than a way of securing his position as leader of South Africa for the many years to come.

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The Link Between Corruption and the Global Surge of Populism

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“Populism” has been defined in many different ways, but the context in which the term is most frequently used today aligns with the definition proposed by Cas Mudde in The Populist Zeitgeist: “an ideology that considers society to be ultimately separated into two homogeneous and antagonistic groups, ‘the pure people’ versus ‘the corrupt elite.’” This formulation certainly captures the political style of the leaders discussed at last month’s Harvard Law School conference on “Populist Plutocrats: Lessons from Around the World,” including Silvio Berlusconi in Italy, Thaksin Shinawatra in Thailand, Joseph Estrada in the Philippines, and (perhaps to a somewhat lesser extent) Alberto Fujimori in Peru and Jacob Zuma in South Africa. And it certainly captures the rhetoric of Donald Trump.

A couple of previous posts have provided an overview of the Populist Plutocrats conference agenda and information about the video recording (see here, here and here). In this post, I want to use the conference discussions as a jumping-off point for thinking more generally about how populism relates to systemic corruption—both as a consequence and as a cause.

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Populist Plutocrats Conference–Video Available

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Last Saturday, on September 23, Harvard Law School organized (in collaboration with the Stigler Center at the University of Chicago) a conference on “Populist Plutocrats: Lessons from Around the World,” which I previously advertised on this blog (see here and here). The event was video-recorded for those who are interested but were not able to attend in person. At the moment, the available video is a full, unedited recording, which you can find here (on the Stigler Center’s YouTube channel). We’re hoping to get the video edited and uploaded in a more convenient format soon, but for those who are interested, I’ll provide in this post the time locations for different sessions of the event:

I hope and expect that we’ll have some more posts in the coming weeks that reflect and engage substantively with some of the discussions at the conference, and in particular how they relate to issues of corruption and related topics, but for now I hope some of you will check out some of the video recording.

 

Upcoming Conference on “Populist Plutocrats: Lessons from Around the World” (Sept. 23, Harvard Law School)

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On Saturday, September 23rd, Harvard Law School, in collaboration with the University of Chicago’s Stigler Center, will host a one-day conference entitled “Populist Plutocrats: Lessons from Around the World.” The conference will focus on an important and dangerous phenomenon: political leaders who successfully exploit anti-elite sentiment in order to achieve power, but who, once in office, seem primarily interested in enriching themselves, along with a relatively small circle of family members and cronies. Many Americans might find that this description accurately captures President Trump, who campaigned as a populist, but who is governing as more as a “crony capitalist” plutocrat—or, some would allege, as a quasi-kleptocrat.

Americans seeking to understand the challenges our country is now facing might do well to look abroad. After all, while Trump’s leveraging of the power of the presidency for personal enrichment—enabled by anti-elite sentiment among his supporters—may well be unprecedented in modern U.S. history, it is not, alas, unprecedented in the modern world. Indeed, while every country’s experience is different, and we must always be careful not to overstate the parallels, many other democracies have had leaders who could be described as populist plutocrats, or even populist kleptocrats, in something like the Trump mold. While such resemblances have occasionally been noted (see, for example, here, here, here, and here), but there has not yet been much of a sustained attempt to understand populist plutocracy/kleptocracy and closely related phenomena in comparative perspective. The September 23 conference will seek to initiate more sustained exploration of these issues, and will also provide an opportunity for experts from other parts of the world–who have more experience with political leaders who combine populist rhetoric with self-interested profiteering and cronyism–to offer a distinct perspective on the challenges the United States is currently facing.

The conference will feature the following panels: Continue reading →

How Should the U.S. Anticorruption Community Respond to Trump? Engagement vs. Confrontation

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So Donald Trump is now the President of the United States, and has been for almost two weeks. Yes, this is really happening. And yes, this is really frightening. As has been pointed out countless times, Donald Trump poses a unique and unprecedented threat to American political institutions. It’s not mainly the hard-right policies that President Trump and the Republican Congress will push. People can strongly disagree with much of that policy agenda (as I do), but those policy positions are, alas, within the American political mainstream. And it’s not just Trump’s obvious narcissism, racism, and ignorance, bad as those are. On top of all that, Trump seems to view the presidency mainly as an opportunity for personal enrichment, and many of his top-level advisors and appointees seem to have a similar attitude. Notwithstanding his (obviously disingenuous) “drain the swamp” rhetoric, Trump—and many congressional Republicans—seem to have little regard for basic ethical norms and principles. And there are reasonable fears, based on what we’ve seen so far, that much of the Trump Administration’s policy agenda, though couched in familiar conservative market-oriented rhetoric, will in fact be oriented toward enriching the friends and families of senior administration officials, including but not limited to Trump’s own organization.

A democratically elected head of government who ran on a populist platform, but whose agenda seems to be oriented primarily toward using political power to enrich himself and his cronies? This might be a new experience for Americans, but as Professor Palifka pointed out in her post last week, this is a familiar story in many other countries (including Mexico, Ms. Palifka’s lead example). Think Silvio Berlusconi in Italy, Nestor and Cristina Kirchner in Argentina, Thaksin Shinawatra in Thailand, Jacob Zuma in South Africa, and countless others. Now that the U.S. seems to be facing a similar situation, the U.S. anticorruption community—which I’ll define loosely as the diverse set of activists, advocacy groups, commentators, researchers, scholars, and others who focus on anticorruption in their professional work—needs to be actively involved in responding.

Unfortunately, the U.S. anticorruption community is not especially well-prepared to deal with this situation. Put aside for the moment that the most prominent international anticorruption advocacy group—Transparency International (TI)—recently voted to strip its U.S. chapter (TI-USA) of its accreditation, triggering an ongoing internal fight that has, I gather, left the chapter in limbo. (That’s a whole other story.) Much more important than any internal organizational drama is the fact that most U.S. anticorruption advocacy groups have typically focused on questions of U.S. anticorruption policy—such as FCPA enforcement, asset recovery, corporate transparency, and the like—not on systemic corruption in the U.S. government itself. True, some groups have in the past positioned themselves as fighting systemic corruption in the U.S. government, but those groups generally use a broad (in my view, overly broad) definition of “corruption” that emphasizes primarily campaign finance and lobbying reform—noble causes, to be sure, but not really the main worry right now. The U.S. anticorruption community faces a challenge that’s more akin to the challenge anticorruption communities have faced (or are still facing) in places like Mexico, Italy, Argentina, Thailand, and South Africa, though perhaps with even higher stakes.

My sense is that many leading figures in the U.S. anticorruption community are already thinking hard, and having many constructive conversations, about how to respond to the unique challenges posed by the Trump Administration. In the remainder of this post, I want to focus on a basic strategic question that I’ve seen come up many times in these conversations: Engage or confront? Continue reading →

Jacob Zuma Violated the Constitution. Now What?

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It’s hard to imagine a court decision more dramatic than the South African Constitutional Court’s March 31 ruling on President Jacob Zuma’s misuse of public funds at his private home in Nkandla. In powerful language that sometimes verged on purple prose, the ConCourt announced that the Public Protector, the constitutionally-created institution charged with investigating improper government conduct, is the “embodiment of a biblical David, … who fights the most powerful and very well-resourced Goliath[:]  impropriety and corruption by government officials.” In order for the Public Protector to effectively serve that function, the ConCourt decided, the remedial action she recommends must be binding. By failing to follow her prescribed remedial action, which included paying back a “reasonable percentage” of the misused funds, Zuma had failed in his “obligation[] to uphold, defend and respect the Constitution.”

However, the scene in the National Assembly, South Africa’s lower (and more important) house of Parliament, on May 4 was equally dramatic—though much less dignified. With President Zuma scheduled to make his first appearance before the National Assembly since the Nkandla judgment–and with the reopening of a different judgment by a lower court that could lead to the investigation into another corruption-related incident–the opposition Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) party demanded that he not be allowed to speak since he was clearly “illegitimate.” EFF members and the Speaker of the National Assembly got into a “screaming match,” which eventually escalated into a fight. As Parliamentary protection service officers forcibly removed the EFF from the legislature, the EFF members continued to shout insults and declare that it was the President, not they, that should be forced to leave. The day also involved the ruling African National Congress (ANC), Zuma’s party, ruling that any quotations from the Nkandla judgment during the legislative session were out of order, and the Democratic Alliance (DA), the primary opposition party, mocking Zuma and calling him the “looter in chief.” Putting a punctuation mark on this fracas was a five-day ban on the EFF’s National Assembly representatives and a decision by the remaining opposition parties to boycott the National Assembly the following day.

The ConCourt’s ruling, though, is far more than just a prompt for an exciting 24 hours in the National Assembly.  Looking further down the road, what does the Nkandla judgment mean for South Africa?

Continue reading →

Why Hasn’t Jacob Zuma’s Latest Anti-Anticorruption Effort Succeeded Yet?

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Any time South African President Jacob Zuma is involved in something, it’s easy to jump to the conclusion that corruption will somehow be involved as well. That’s particularly true in relation to the tension between him and Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan. This tension has recently manifested itself through a fractious battle, often via proxies, over decades-old happenings in the South African Revenue Service (SARS), an institution of which Gordhan used to be the head.

The attack upon Gordhan is largely motivated by concerns that he has the power and willingness to cut off some of Zuma’s corrupt lines of patronage. So far, nothing new: Zuma has a history of going after anyone who he perceives as threatening the network of graft which he’s woven. What’s particularly noteworthy this time, though, is that he’s facing some difficulty getting Gordhan out of his way—and that difficulty might hint at some hope for anticorruption advocates.

Continue reading →