The impact of Illicit Financial Flows on the South African political economy under Jacob Zuma, 2009–2018

Abstract

South Africa has also fallen a victim of a greater major concern over the scale and negative impact of Illicit Financial Flows (IFFs) on the country's governance and developmental agenda. However, there is an unjustified observation that as one of Africa's biggest economies, South Africa is not a victim of IFFs. This observation shows that scholars and academic practitioners have not yet uniformly come to a cul‐de‐sac on this subject, and as such, this confusion constitutes a huge dichotomy on the subject matter. Based on Afrocentricity as the alternative lens, this article argues that there are after effects of the practice of IFFs in South Africa and that IFFs need to be given a special attention in order to curb them from destabilising South Africa's economic and political stability. Although this article discusses IFFs in general and how they come about, the central focus of this article is to unpack the impacts of IFFs under the Zuma administration and provide possible solutions. Methodically, this article relied on the prevailing continental and South African discourse circulating and thematic content analysis on conversations.