Over the past two decades, recurring waves of protest in South Africa have been explained by one dominant perspective: the failure of the state to provide services to its poorest citizens after apartheid. Rising unemployment, poor infrastructure and inadequate housing have been the familiar explanations offered.
We are political scientists who have been analyzing protests and protest data for years. one in recent articles We propose that the overall pattern of protest activity in South Africa cannot be explained by socio-economic conditions alone. It tracks the internal power struggles of the ruling party, the African National Congress (ANC).
This has led us to a new study of state capture.
as soon as we left In a paper in 2025State capture in South Africa often boils down to large-scale corruption. Focuses on how private businesses, working with politicians, repurpose legislative and administrative processes to serve their own interests and disable the criminal justice system to avoid consequences.
The conventional understanding presents state capture as plunder: the opportunistic and organized theft of public resources by politically connected networks and enabled by a compromised president.
We do not oppose the reality of this looting. But we argue that it was also structurally somewhat more purposeful. State capture, in our view, was the mechanism by which former President Jacob Zuma sought to create a “power elite” in the ANC.
It is a term we borrow from the sociological tradition of C. Wright Mills to refer to a small cohesive group. Capable of making decisions that have national consequences in political, military, and economic institutions. In contrast, politically connected networks may have influence but are too broad to exercise power.
The power elite matters because it explains who actually makes the biggest decisions in society and why democratic institutions do not always fully control those decisions.
The argument we are making is a result of how the country understands what state capture is, and what the dynamics of South African democracy are.
protest as barometer
Based on data from the South African Police Service, the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, and the Institute for Security Studies, we identify a notable pattern. Protest incidents increased sharply around 2006, leading to what some researchers called “”.rebel ratioTill 2011.
They then stabilized and began to decline between approximately 2013 and 2017. This period coincides with the strengthening of Zuma's grip on power and the height of state capture.
After 2018, protests again escalated to unprecedented levels. In 2021, the country experienced its worst civil uprising since the end of apartheid.
The socio-economic conditions commonly cited to explain protests – unemployment, inequality, poor service delivery – do not follow the same pattern. They did not improve during the peace of 2013–2017. Whatever it is, they got screwed. As our paper records show, municipal audit results deteriorated sharply by the end of the period.
Inequality, as measured by the Gini coefficient, remained essentially unchanged in South Africa's major cities. The exception was Cape Town, where inequality declined.
We conclude that the stabilization of protest activity cannot be attributed to improvements in the living conditions of poor South Africans.
Something else was suppressing the mobilization of dissent.
Our answer is based on political sociology and comparative work on elite formation in Africa and beyond. We conclude that protests are a means of niche competition. This involves the strategic deployment of professional agitators by local politicians and their networks fighting for control of resources, positions and patronage within the ANC.
When these competitions are intense and unresolved, they result in conflict. When they are overcome the resistance reduces.
How
By diverting state-owned enterprises from their public mandates, the Zuma network generated huge rents, which were then used to finance private enrichment and factional political activity. This included paying for party rallies, maintaining provincial and regional networks, building sympathetic media infrastructure, and distributing cash and contracts to potential opponents in exchange for loyalty or silence.
The result was temporary stabilization of what was a fragmented and disputed elite area.
Between roughly 2013 and 2017, a group of politically aligned operators were able to discipline internal competition, by allocating positions in government, state-owned enterprises, and the party apparatus.
Those who did not buy in were expelled, marginalized, or subjected to violence. We note that political killings increased rapidly during Zuma's second term. Evidence before the Zondo Commission into state capture Pointed to the deployment of armed units Under the operational control of the President.
The relative “stability” observable in the protest data between 2013 and 2017 was the successful suppression of elite competition through corruption, patronage, and coercion. Modest improvements in municipal expenditure were the result of elite power exercised over administrative systems.
Revealed under Ramaphosa
If Zuma's presidency saw the creation of a power elite, Cyril Ramaphosa's tenure saw its disintegration.
The consequences have been serious.
in the anc 54th National Conference in December 2017Ramaphosa narrowly defeated Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma for the post of party president. After this, Zuma's internal compact fracture started occurring. This was followed almost immediately by an uptick in protest activity.
Ramaphosa was unwilling to deploy corruption and violence as political solutions. But without an alternative basis for managing elite competition, the ANC's internal cracks deepened.
Symptoms of this disintegration were visible in 2023:
Gatekeeping became decentralized and unregulated. Elite competition began to occur outside the party system entirely.
A sobering conclusion and a sign of hope
We conclude that some of this will be diverted to organized crime. We suggest that mafia-type networks should be expected to grow.
However, there is a more promising possibility. The reason the ANC served as the primary arena for elite competition was that it controlled access to the “gates” – the allocation of positions in the state, civil service, and state-owned enterprises.
Remove that control, and the character of elite competition will change. This is exactly what is at stake in the amendment to the Public Service Act of 1994. Signed into law by Ramaphosa On 26 March 2026, it was gazetted on 1 April 2026.
The purpose of the law is:
If implemented, political parties will be forced to compete for support through policy and performance rather than patronage. Elite competition will be transferred to the public administration system itself. Ideally, it would be governed by merit, transparency and professional standards.
We are cautious about the prospects of this reform. The history is not encouraging and the political circumstances are challenging.
But if it can end gatekeeping, new legislation like the Public Service Amendment Act will transform the elite social terrain in South Africa.
Ivor Chipkin and Jelena Vidojević are affiliated with the New South Institute
Jelena Vidojević does not work for, consult, hold shares in, or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond her academic appointment.
By Ivor Chipkin, Associate Lecturer, University of Pretoria
Jelena Vidojević, Affiliated Researcher, Gordon Institute of Business Science, University of Pretoria