Political Corruption: Before and After Apartheid

Abstract

Since South Africa's 1994 political transition, a major feature of the country's new politics has been the centrality of issues of corruption in public controversy. This article aims to analyse how the administrative and political legacies brought to the present by both the old South African state structures and the new political leadership produce varying types of corruption. The article takes three paths to this goal, considering the issues conceptually, comparatively and historically. First, it argues that most writing on South African corruption has failed to use the analytically necessary distinctions between concepts of rent-seeking behaviour, patron–client relationships and corruption as such. Second the article points to the comparative frameworks that may usefully be adopted to examine the question, with particular attention to the work of Chabal and Daloz. Third, the article attempts a historical overview of corruption questions in South Africa. It contends that there was a high degree of variability in the levels and nature of rent-seeking activities in the state during the century of white domination in Southern Africa. The legacies of forms of rent seeking, patronage and corruption existing within the former white state, the Bantustans, and within the liberation movement itself have all combined to affect the politics of the post-apartheid state.