South African author Hennie Van Vuuren says the country’s democracy is suffering due to state capture.
The author of the well-known book titled “Apartheid Guns and Money” made these comments while speaking during a televised debate on state capture in the country.
Van Vuuren says the closure of anti-corruption agencies has allowed the state to shift focus from the big crimes of the wealthy to the petty crimes of the poor. He says, “We have criminalised the activities of the poor and I don’t think we focus on the crimes of the wealthy in this country. We see that some of the very arms companies that supplied weapons to the apartheid state were the very same companies that the Mbeki administration was prepared to sign an arms deal with.
“Someone who was implicated in those arms deals is a man by the name of Jacob Zuma. We’ve closed down the anti-corruption agencies and we aren’t able to control this dynamic of state capture and democracy suffers.”
