Shadows and Light: Reconsidering State Capture and Development in South Africa’s Power Sector

Abstract

State capture has had lasting relevance in South Africa, serving as a conceptual aid in diagnosing dysfunction in the power sector, notably
in the public power utility Eskom Holdings. This paper proposes a novel characterisation of state capture as a form of regime contestation,
drawing on socio-technical transitions (STT) literature (Frank and Schanz 2022; Fuenfschilling and Binz 2018; Fuenfschilling and Truffer
2014; Geels 2014; Kirshner et al. 2019). It uses this characterisation to understand state capture as a coherent process in which mutable
networks of public and private actors employ an opportunistic mix of legal and illegal interventions targeting state organs to reconfigure the
regime, enabling their control over the distribution of power and resources. This understanding builds on analyses that elucidate the form
and function of state-capture actor networks (Fazekas and Tóth 2016; Godinho and Hermanus 2018; Grzymala-Busse 2008; Maina 2019;
Swilling 2018; Valencia, Ansolabehere, Espinal, Luna, Ortiz and Serrano 2019; Wedel 2001). While this understanding avoids the binary
distinction between a captured and uncaptured state (Hellman, Jones, and Kaufmann 2000; Hellman and Kaufmann 2019; Hellman et
al. 2001), this paper posits that an analysis of state capture remains troubled by normative questions. To reintroduce this dimension with
more nuance, this paper creates a heuristic framework to characterise and problematise the power system regime, with reference to four
domains of change (signals of regime contestation): formal (formal and informal rules); material (pertaining to resources and technology);
agentic (authority, influence and agency) and strategic (goals and objectives). The framework is applied to a provisionally demarcated
capture period (2009–2018) relative to the preceding (1994–2008) and subsequent (2019–2025) periods. This leads to an approach to
capture considered on a spectrum, in relation to unavoidable questions regarding the legitimacy of the rules, goals and distribution of
power and resources.