Unmasking the Intersection of Crime and Politics in South Africa

Zamikhaya Maseti

The proceedings at the Madlanga Commission, which are investigating the de-establishment of the political killings task team in KwaZulu-Natal, are both exciting and intriguing, yet also disappointing.

They are exciting because they bring closer to home what has long fascinated me in Colombia. I often enjoy watching crime documentaries, and a few case studies are as compelling as the operations of notorious figures like Pablo Escobar and Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán. This habit of observation is not detached from my own reality; it is sharpened by my personal encounters growing up in the crime-infested Red Location of Port Elizabeth.

I lived among criminals, dagga smokers, and home burglars. They carefully selected their targets in the White suburbs, most notably Summerstrand and Newton Park. Their justification was that by raiding these privileged spaces, they were contributing to the broader national struggle for liberation.

They were angry at the brutality of the Apartheid government, and their rage found expression not only in crime but also in solidarity with the political uprisings of the time.

In 1976, when the fires of resistance swept the country, they too set shops ablaze and torched bakery trucks. I still recall my first taste of cake, not from a family celebration, but from a burning SASKO bread truck on Gunguluza Street in New Brighton.

When Steven Bantu Biko was killed, their anger intensified. They escalated their campaign against Summerstrand and Newton Park, justifying it as vengeance against a violent system. I was captivated by their movie-like tales of burglary and sabotage.

Yet, even then, I rejected their methods as ludicrous and misguided. I chose another route. At Cowan High School, I encountered the fiery leadership of the Congress of South African Students (COSAS), including Nocawa Nondumo, Brenda Bhadela, Lulu Johnson, and Boy Jijana, among others.

They were waging a principled struggle against Apartheid education. I found comfort in joining them, contributing to the national democratic struggle in ways more meaningful than the fairy tales of gangsters in my neighbourhood.

Yet, my Red Location friends and petty criminals pale in comparison to the syndicates being unmasked at the Madlanga Commission. The names and operations surfacing there are comparable to those associated with Pablo Escobar and El Chapo.

The modus operandi is the same: the capturing of the state itself. Herein lies the greatest danger. What we are witnessing carries echoes of Colombia, where criminal networks penetrated state institutions and blurred the line between illegality and legitimate politics. Top cops, politicians, and power brokers are implicated, and it is only a matter of time before journalists and analysts emerge as accessories in this Escobarian value chain within our own backyard.

This is the intriguing dimension of the Commission, its exposure of the overlap between criminal syndicates and political authority. It is precisely this overlap that challenges the theoretical assumptions of the Normative Theory of Governance.

The theory presumes that institutions, when properly designed and constrained by rules, will serve the public interest and ensure accountability. Yet the Madlanga Commission reveals the fragility of this assumption in transitional democracies where formal rules coexist with informal patronage networks and criminal economies. 

Instead of governance as a steering process towards development, what emerges is governance captured and redirected, where legality is hollowed out and authority is repurposed to shield violence and impunity.

Here, the Theory of Normative Governance, articulated by prominent scholars like Goran Hyden and Robert Rotberg, becomes indispensable. Hyden, in his book entitled Governance and Politics in Africa (1992), defines governance as a steering process that ensures development through accountability, rule of law, and participation.

He argues further that good governance requires rulers to be constrained by rules, to act in the public interest, and to remain accountable to citizens. Rotberg, in his book entitled When States Fail: Causes and Consequences (2004), complements this by reminding us that governance is ultimately about the delivery of political goods, security, justice, and opportunity.

In South Africa, the promise of good governance was embedded in the 1996 Constitution. It was meant to mark a decisive break from the illegitimacy of apartheid rule, embedding transparency, accountability, and equity in the democratic state.

But the revelations at the Madlanga Commission point instead to the deconsolidation of good governance. What Hyden warns us against is unfolding before our eyes: rulers unbound by rules, accountability systems manipulated, and public power diverted into private criminal syndicates.

KwaZulu-Natal has become a textbook case of this deconsolidation. The de-establishment of the political killings task team demonstrates the hollowing out of state institutions. The overlap between crime networks and political elites has corroded the rule of law.

The very organs of state meant to protect citizens from violence and intimidation are being repurposed to protect those who sponsor violence. In Hyden’s language, governance ceases to be a steering process towards development and becomes a hijacked vehicle serving private and factional interests.

The Colombian analogy is not hyperbole. Escobar and El Chapo flourished because the boundaries between criminal economies and state authority collapsed. Politicians, police, judges, journalists, and entire institutions were drawn into the orbit of narco power.

South Africa’s tragedy is that the same dynamic is taking root; what begins as selective assassinations in KwaZulu-Natal spreads into systemic criminalisation of politics, threatening the integrity of the entire democratic order.

And here lies the greatest disappointment. The Madlanga Commission is more than a fact-finding mission. It is a decisive test of whether South Africa can reverse the spiral of governance deconsolidation. The exposure of the entanglement between illegality and political power forces us to confront the fragility of our democratic project.

If the Commission fails to restore credibility to institutions, the implications will be devastating. Governance will lose its steering capacity, democracy will hemorrhage legitimacy, and development will stall under the weight of corruption and criminal capture.

The danger is that the Colombianisation of our politics will not remain confined to KwaZulu-Natal. It will radiate nationally, further eroding the public’s already fragile trust in the democratic order. As we approach the 2029 General Election, the likely outcome of such erosion is deepening voter apathy.

Citizens, disillusioned by the seamless marriage of politics and criminality, may withdraw altogether from electoral participation. This disengagement is not benign; it signals the further deconsolidation of democracy, where the promise of 1994 fades into cynicism, and the State itself is hollowed out by the retreat of its citizens.

If good governance is about accountability, transparency, and the delivery of political goods, then its deconsolidation spells the opposite: impunity, opacity, and institutional paralysis. The Madlanga Commission thus carries the burden of re-shaping the trajectory of good governance and the democratic destiny of South Africa.

Whether it will stem the tide or accelerate the collapse will determine if the Constitution of 1996 still anchors our collective future, or whether we drift into a political wilderness where democracy is form without substance, governance is emptied of legitimacy, and development is strangled by criminal capture.

* Zamikhaya Maseti is a Political Economy Analyst and holds a M.Phil in South African Politics and Political Economy from Nelson Mandela University.

** The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of IOL, Independent Media or The African.