Oligarchy, Corruption and Social Justice

Abstract

South Africa is the ‘most extreme example of an extractive economy in the modern world’, dominated by ‘one of the most concentratedoligarchies in the world’ (Duigan 2026, 6, 4). Resource dependency, the structure of the market, monopolistic control and barriers toinclusive growth permits capture of the bulk of the economic surplus by a small clique of business elites and politicians before any government interventions occur. Social grants, free basic services, public spending programmes and progressive taxation does not change this pre-distribution, because the state and big capital are joint wardens of the core strategic sectors of the economy—mining, banking, and agri-business—locking out the majority from formal sector employment. An underappreciated problem in South Africa’s political economy, oligarchic rule, the politics of the defence of wealth, is tracking a global trend of entrenching and deepening inequality. Rising inequalityis everywhere degrading democratic institutions, eroding trust in government and hastening the political disengagement of the poor. This,in turn, is increasing the ability of the superrich to dominate policymaking, warping policies, institutions, and governance towards greaterinequality. Again, South Africa is no exception. This paper interrogates corruption through the nexus of inequality, democratic backslidingand state capture as manifestation of oligarchic rule. Front centring social justice, the paper appeals for a re-orientation of the mainstreamanti-corruption discourse towards engagement with the politics of the defence of wealth by disrupting the business as usual approach of the‘most corrupt private sector in the world’ (PricewaterhouseCoopers 2020, 8) and limiting the undue influence of private money in politics.