This article was born from a comment received in response to one of our articles on the new president of Namibia. A reader asked us whether her election does not represent yet another episode of “state capture” in the African country. While recognizing the legitimacy of the question, we believe it is our duty to clarify that we do not have elements to affirm a direct involvement of the new president in dynamics of state capture. However, we believe it is useful to take this opportunity to explain what is meant by “state capture”, through a broad reflection that starts from the two best-known African cases – South Africa and Namibia – and then proposes some considerations on the Italian context.
The concept of “state capture” (literally: capture of the State) has established itself in recent decades as one of the key categories for understanding advanced and systemic forms of political corruption. While traditional corruption describes the illicit exchange between public and private (bribes, favoritism, abuse), “state capture” indicates a deeper level: the one in which private actors manage to influence, manipulate or even control state institutions, bending laws, policies and public appointments to their own interests.
The term “state capture” was formalized in the early 2000s by World Bank scholars, including Joel Hellman, Geraint Jones and Daniel Kaufmann, to describe the situation of some post-Soviet countries. In those contexts, oligarchic groups had managed to influence the writing of laws and to direct institutional choices to their advantage, well beyond simple administrative corruption. At the time, people spoke of a “captured transition”, that is a democratic and market trajectory deviated by the systemic intervention of private economic powers.
In South Africa, the concept of “state capture” has seen unprecedented public spread, becoming part of the common language. This occurred during the presidency of Jacob Zuma (2009-2018), during which the Gupta family, businessmen of Indian origin, acquired increasing influence over the government. The Gupta brothers (Ajay, Atul and Rajesh “Tony” Gupta, but Atul’s nephews should also be considered: Varun, Ashish and Amol; the latter two reside in the United States) have managed to influence the appointment of ministers, to obtain public contracts, to manipulate state agencies and to condition the country’s political agenda.
Journalistic reports and judicial investigations led to the creation of the Zondo Commission, which collected thousands of pages of testimonies and documents between 2018 and 2022, confirming the existence of a “state capture”. The term was thus consecrated also from an institutional point of view, entering the South African political lexicon.
The South African case is distinguished by its systemic scale: it was not just an isolated cases of corruption, but of an organic and pervasive project of state control by a private economic actor.
In 2019, a case exploded in Namibia that brought the term “state capture” to the center of the debate. The scandal ‘Fishrot’ involved the Icelandic company Samherji, accused of having paid bribes to Namibian officials and ministers in exchange for fishing concessions in the country’s territorial waters. The revelations came from a whistleblower Johannes Stefansson, a former manager of the company, who provided documents and decisive testimonies. The bribes involved millions of dollars and indicated a collusive system between politics and business.
Although more limited in scope than the South African case, the Fishrot scandal showed how the logic of “capture” could operate even in apparently less vulnerable contexts, and how transnational economic interests could infiltrate the heart of African public policies. Namibia, considered one of the most stable and democratic African countries, thus became an example of how even apparently solid states can be vulnerable to sophisticated forms of systemic corruption.
Unlike simple corruption, ‘state capture’ implies a structural control over the functions of the State by private actors or political-economic networks. In Italy, the “conflict of interest” has often been discussed as a form of contamination between the public and private spheres, especially in relation to the figure of Silvio Berlusconi and other politicians of recent decades. However, this parallel risks oversimplifying the concept of “state capture”. While the Italian conflict of interest manifested itself explicitly and was the subject of institutional debate, state capture often operates in an opaque, underground manner, through co-optations, strategic appointments and targeted legislative changes.
More than a direct analogy, we can consider state capture as a lens to interpret contemporary forms of private power that appropriate public instruments, reducing the distance between economic elite and policy makers. This happens both in African countries in the process of democratic consolidation and in mature democracies, although in different ways.
The concept of “state capture” represents a crucial interpretative key for understanding contemporary transformations of power. From South Africa to Namibia, passing through Western contexts such as Italy, the issue of the relationship between the State and private interests shows the need to rethink democratic guarantees, the transparency of institutions and the role of civil society. Studying African cases is not only an exotic exercise, but a way to reflect on dynamics that also cross our European democracies, in forms that are perhaps less visible, but equally incisive.
