Stealthy state crimes during times of disaster – Mail and Guardian

To have once been a criminal is no disgrace. To remain a criminal is the disgrace.

BBBEE (Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment) was designed by the South African government to redress racial imbalances in the economy. But the policy has been hijacked and repurposed by individuals and factions within the ruling party for the purpose of corruption and self-enrichment, notably during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The governments cadre-based BBBEE narrative has been roped in to restructure the economy amid the Covid-pandemic, so as to perpetuate an economic crime by the state. This phenomenon is well explained by the Canadian social and political activist Naomi Kleins notion of disaster capitalism, read alongside Reimans pyrrhic defeat theory, which I probe in the context of a criminological perspective.

Jeffrey Reiman, a conflict criminologist based in the US, contends that the criminal justice system in capitalist states, such as South Africa, demonises the poor as criminogenic in order to deflect the crimes of the rich, thereby legitimising the unjust and unequal distribution of income and wealth that underpins that social order.

BBBEE was repurposed as an ideological vehicle to fulfil an unstated nefarious purpose, namely self-enrichment, under the banner of so-called black economic empowerment. Said in another way, the narrative to which I refer is built around the fictitious idea of black economic empowerment but increasingly serves as a vehicle for fraudulent personal enrichment by politicians and well-connected tenderpreneurs.

Repurposed BBBEE is fictitious, because it only benefits a tiny group at the top, amid widespread unemployment, economic stagnation and poverty.

Stanley Cohen, a world expert on crimes committed by the state, suggests that crimes typically committed by the rich and powerful are not only rarely prosecuted but are not even classified as crimes.

Green criminology, a branch of critical criminology, highlights the governments complicity in environmental crimes, especially its patchy record on global warming.

Consider how easily and surreptitiously the government can repurpose its response to a pandemic disaster for personal gain.

In a recently published paper, I argue that the South African governments BBBEE agenda has, in most cases, been hijacked by at least a faction within the ruling party as a pretext for the large-scale looting of the public purse.

I demonstrate how vested interests in the government used the Covid19 pandemic as a form of disaster capitalism (a term coined by Klein) to divert the lions share of funding for crucial PPE (personal protective equipment) procurement, for personal gain.

Klein explains the idea of disaster capitalism in the following riveting terms: Once a crisis has struck it was crucial to act swiftly, to impose rapid and irreversible change before the crisis-racked society slipped back into the tyranny of the status quo.

The bottom line is that while Friedmans economic model is capable of being partially imposed under democracy, authoritarian conditions are required for the implementation of its true vision.

Kleins highlighting of authoritarianism might be the missing link between the South African governments hard lockdown and the looting of the public purse with such impunity.

One example of this is the tendency of governments around the world to turn the fight against crime into an exercise for authoritarian control over society, as the well-known Norwegian criminologist Nils Christie warned in his book Crime Control as Industry: Towards Gulags Western Style (2017).

By analogy, I suggest that disasters such as Covid-19 have provided a similar opportunity for government, certainly in South Africa, to perpetuate self-enrichment schemes under the guise of a false-flag operation such as BBBEE.

Despite President Cyril Rama-phosas influential anti-corruption election ticket, there is no guarantee that he would survive politically, considerably compounded by the robbery at his Phala Phala game farm.

In the perceptive words of Ralph Mathekgas The ANCs Last Decade (2021): This picture [the prospects of Ramaphosas presidency] becomes complex in the sense that the more Ramaphosa achieves what he promised in government for example, fighting against corruption the more tensions emerge within the ANC, making it difficult for him to win a second term in the party. That Ramaphosas anti-corruption drive in the government is creating enemies for him in the party is an open secret.

With the ANCS cadre-based deployment policy, combined with BBBEE, the ruling party is discriminating against all those communities (both white and non-white) not aligned with ANC thinking. The rationale for this design is, of course, to feed the vast patronage network within the ANC.

Decisions [were] made to serve the patronage networks flowing through the ANC, observes Mathekga in his book, which benefits the interests of an elite group of party officials and business [people]. It also points to the danger of surreptitious state crimes during times of disaster.

The crux of my argument is that BBBEE is a false-flag operation which has been repeatedly used to hoodwink the public by operating as a Ponzi scheme of sorts for personal enrichment while masquerading as a vehicle for black economic empowerment. In the case of the governments proposed economic restructuring during Covid-19, the same criminal modus operandi was essentially employed.

In particular, the roll-out of both the supply and distribution of the vaccine and PPE were enacted within the framework of BBBEE, namely not on merit or even qualified merit but, supposedly, solely on the criterion of being a cadre.

The Special Investigating Unit found tender corruption accounted for as much as 66% of all national funding set aside for the procurement of PPE. The cost of the vaccine roll-out in South Africa was inflated by as much as 400% of procurement prices. BBBEE is clearly a race-based ideology which has led, and is leading, to significant social discohesion in the ranks of those left behind.

Even though one must admit that economic redress is certainly justified in view of South Africas failed project of economic redistribution (one of the ANCs election promises in 1994), the point remains that the vast majority of South Africans of all races are excluded from the fruits of this looting.

The confluence of state capture, as well as BBBEE and patronage networks within the ANC, created a perfect storm which culminated in the governments opportunistic response to Covid-19 in March 2020, even if one concedes that a mere faction within the ruling party drove the initiative in favour of self-enrichment.

Understanding the allure of the state in fusing its agenda with that of Big Business is the central focus of green criminology, noted above.

My research has highlighted the seminal import of free speech and critical thinking, so often absent from mainstream, empirically based criminology, in seeing the forest for the trees.

In fact, had free speech been a fundamental right adhered to throughout the world, we might not even have had to contend with a Covid pandemic.

Dr Casper Ltter is a conflictcriminologist affiliated withNorth-West Universitys School of Philosophy (Potchefstroom) as a research fellow.

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Stealthy state crimes during times of disaster - Mail and Guardian