The Betrayal of the Rainbow Nation: How Mbeki’s Patronage Networks Paved the Way for State Capture
In 2019, former President Thabo Mbeki stood before the nation. He decried the infiltration of “imigodoyi” into the African National Congress (ANC). He described them as self-serving opportunists. In his words, they joined the party not for liberation’s noble cause. Instead, they aimed to exploit its proximity to state power and resources for personal enrichment. His lament, dripping with righteous indignation, painted a picture of a noble ANC corrupted by greedy interlopers. But, the bitter truth is that Mbeki himself laid the foundation for this rot. It is a heartbreaking revelation. It stabs at the soul of South Africa. The imigodoyi he condemned were not invaders. They were the progeny of Mbeki’s patronage networks.
It was a system he cultivated, nurtured, and unleashed upon a nation still clinging to the fragile hope of 1994.
The dominant narrative, promoted by pundits and historians, depicts Jacob Zuma as the villain. He is portrayed as a rogue populist who, with the Gupta family, hollowed out state institutions. They plundered resources and plunged South Africa into a cesspool of corruption labelled “state capture”. But this story is a lie, a convenient fiction that absolves the architects of an earlier, subtler betrayal. The tragedy of our post-liberation state did not begin with Zuma or the Guptas.
Mbeki was the technocratic maestro who initiated the process. He consolidated power and formed elite pacts with White Monopoly Capital. These actions created the machinery of greed that Zuma later hijacked. This is the story of Mbeki’s patronage networks. It is a legacy of exclusion, elitism, and self-interest. This legacy haunts us still. It leaves South Africans angry, heartbroken, and betrayed.
The Seeds of Betrayal: Mbeki’s Technocratic Takeover
Nelson Mandela handed the reins of the ANC to Thabo Mbeki in 1994. He first served as deputy president and later became president. South Africa stood at a crossroads. The Rainbow Nation, born from the ashes of apartheid, brimmed with promise a promise of equality, justice, and shared prosperity. Yet, beneath the rhetoric of reconciliation, Mbeki orchestrated a quieter, more insidious shift.
The Growth, Employment, and Redistribution (GEAR) policy formed an unholy alliance with multinational corporations.
He assembled a technocratic bloc of exiles. He gathered Goldman Sachs-trained policy wonks. He also included capital-aligned bureaucrats who seized control of the state’s levers. Through the Growth, Employment, and Redistribution (GEAR) policy, Mbeki’s patronage networks formed an unholy alliance with multinational corporations. They also connected with the financial sector and White Monopoly Capital. This sidelined the ANC’s mass base, its rural branches, its militant Youth League, and its trade union allies. It was a cold, calculated betrayal.
The Treasury, Public Enterprises, and State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs) became the fiefdoms of this elite. They monopolised tenders, Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) deals, and economic appointments. Meanwhile, the rural ANC was locked out. It was the grassroots heart of the liberation struggle. The rural ANC was left to wither in poverty and irrelevance.
The Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) was once a beacon of hope for housing, healthcare, and land reform. It was quietly abandoned. Its ideals were sacrificed on the altar of investor confidence and fiscal discipline. This was the birth of Mbeki’s patronage networks. In this system, power and profit flowed to a select few. Meanwhile, the masses, who had fought and died for freedom, were left to beg for scraps.
Jacob Zuma, elected ANC national chairperson in 1994, was a case study in this exclusion. He was a stalwart of the struggle and a member of the party’s “Top Six”. Despite this, he was denied a meaningful role in national government. Instead, he was relegated to the MEC of Housing in KwaZulu-Natal. This post was sidelined at a time when the RDP’s housing dreams were being gutted.
Rural ANC structures, Youth League militants, and trade unionists, particularly from COSATU, faced the same fate. They were locked out of Mbeki’s patronage networks. Their voices were drowned by the hum of corporate boardrooms and Treasury spreadsheets. The anger of the excluded simmered, a quiet fury building beneath the surface.
Centralisation and the Cracks in the Facade
Political scientist Shane Mac Giollabhui, in The Fall of an African President, exposes the grim mechanics of Mbeki’s rule. Under his leadership, the ANC underwent a profound shift, centralising decision-making in the presidency and key ministries like the Treasury. Grassroots activists and alliance partners like COSATU and the South African Communist Party (SACP) were pushed aside. Provincial structures were also marginalised. Their influence on policy was reduced to whispers.
The party morphed into an “electoral-professional” model. It became obsessed with governance efficiency, elite consensus, and investor-friendly optics. This shift abandoned the mass participation and internal democracy that once defined the ANC. This was Mbeki’s patronage networks in action a top-down, technocratic stranglehold that prioritised power over people.
Yet, a cruel irony persisted. While Mbeki tightened his grip on the state, the ANC’s internal leadership elections remained decentralised and consultative. Provinces, leagues like the Youth League and Women’s League, and alliance partners held significant voting power at national conferences. This disconnect centralised governance clashing with decentralised party democracy became Mbeki’s Achilles’ heel.
His control of the state, buttressed by Mbeki’s patronage networks, did not silence the growing dissent within the party. The excluded rural branches, disaffected activists, and sidelined allies found a champion in Jacob Zuma. Humiliated and ousted as deputy president, Zuma was now poised to lead a counter-elite insurgency.
Zuma’s Rebellion: A Product of Mbeki’s Making
By 2007, the stage was set for a reckoning. Jacob Zuma was armed with the grievances of the marginalised. He rallied KwaZulu-Natal. He also rallied disaffected ANC branches and alliance partners like COSATU and the SACP. They seethed at Mbeki’s elitist, technocratic rule. Positioning himself as a grassroots warrior, Zuma framed his campaign as a return to the ANC’s democratic, populist roots. It was also a revolt against Mbeki’s patronage networks that had enriched a few while abandoning the many.
At the 2007 Polokwane conference, the ANC’s decentralised leadership choice process was designed to guarantee broad participation. It became the weapon of Mbeki’s undoing. Zuma triumphed, unseating Mbeki as ANC president in a seismic upset that left the technocratic elite reeling.
But victory came at a cost. Zuma, now leading a coalition of the excluded, faced a stark reality. Mbeki’s patronage networks had tied the state’s wealth and influence to White Monopoly Capital. Corporate interests left little room for his supporters. Enter the Gupta family. They were a trio of Indian businessmen. They offered a different infrastructure through media outlets like ANN7 and The New Age. They provided financial backing and strategic access to SOEs and procurement pipelines. The Zuma-Gupta nexus, vilified as the face of “state capture”, was no aberration. It was the inevitable result of Mbeki’s patronage networks. Resources were repatriated to a new elite. This new elite was forged in the fires of exclusion and desperation.
The Myth of Clean Governance
The narrative of a golden Mbeki era disciplined, efficient, and investor-friendly is a cruel deception. Mbeki’s patronage networks operated with subtlety. They channelled state resources through Treasury-managed fiscal policies. Corporate-friendly BEE deals were also utilised. Additionally, there was cadre deployment to loyalists. The framework was less brazen than the Gupta era. It was equally self-serving. It preserved the class interests of a technocratic elite and their corporate allies.
Zuma didn’t corrupt a pristine state. He hijacked one already captured and repurposed the same tools for procurement, tenders, and elite networks for his own faction. The Ratanang Trust, the Guptas’ media ventures, and the looting of SOEs resulted from Mbeki’s patronage networks. This machine was built to enrich the few, no matter who held the keys.
This continuity of patronage politics is a dagger to the heart of South Africa’s dreams. The tragedy isn’t that three Indian immigrants “captured” the state, as the popular story goes. It’s that the state was always designed to be driven by elites, whether Mbeki’s technocrats or Zuma’s cronies.
The ANC’s fatal contradiction centralised state control paired with decentralised leadership politics ensured this outcome. The very structures allowed Mbeki to rule from above. Those same structures enabled Zuma to topple him from below. This unleashing the imigodoyi Mbeki later decried. But make no mistake: these opportunists were the children of Mbeki’s patronage networks, a legacy of greed he can’t escape.
A Nation Betrayed – Mbeki’s Patronage Networks
The anger and sorrow of South Africans today are palpable. We were promised a new dawn in 1994. We envisioned a nation where the shackles of apartheid would give way to justice. We hoped for equity and shared prosperity. Instead, we inherited a system rotten at its core, birthed by Mbeki’s patronage networks and exploited by those who followed.
beki’s patronage networks formed an unholy alliance with multinational corporations… This sidelined the ANC’s mass base…
The rural poor, the working class, and the youth. These are the individuals who bled for freedom. They stay on the sidelines. They watch as elites, old and new, feast on the spoils of a captured state. The RDP’s vision of houses, clinics, and schools lies in tatters. It has been replaced by tender scandals and looted SOEs. The GDP now serves the boardrooms of Sandton. It does not serve the shacks of Khayelitsha.
Mbeki’s 2019 lament about imigodoyi rings hollow, a bitter echo of a man unwilling to face his reflection. He built the machine Mbeki’s patronage networks that centralised power, excluded the masses, and tied the state to capital’s whims.
Zuma and the Guptas didn’t break the framework. They were its natural heirs. They redirected the profits of Mbeki’s patronage networks to a new set of beneficiaries. The result? The nation is staggering under the weight of unemployment. It is burdened by inequality and broken trust. Its dreams of liberation are stolen by the very leaders sworn to protect them.
The Uncomfortable Truth
This history forces us to confront painful realities. First, the corruption we call “state capture” was not a Zuma invention. It was a structural feature of Mbeki’s patronage networks. This system was designed to concentrate wealth and influence. Second, the myth of Mbeki’s clean governance crumbles under scrutiny. It reveals a regime that served elite interests under the guise of competence.
Third, the ANC’s internal contradiction between centralised state power and decentralised party democracy created a battleground. This battleground became a place where factions vied for control. Each faction wielded the same tools of patronage and exclusion.
We, the people of South Africa, are left to mourn a revolution betrayed. The imigodoyi Mbeki condemned were not aliens. They were the inevitable spawn of his own making. They were nurtured by Mbeki’s patronage networks and unleashed upon a vulnerable state.
Our anger burns not just at Zuma. It also burns at the Guptas. Moreover, it burns at a system born in the Mbeki era. This system turned liberation into a feeding trough for the elite. The tragedy of our post-liberation state is not of hijacking. It is by design. It is a machine built to be driven by whoever clawed their way to the top.
A Call to ReckoningMbeki’s Patronage Networks
As we stand in 2025, the scars of this betrayal fester still. Unemployment hovers above 30%. Inequality yawns wider than ever. Trust in the ANC—a movement once synonymous with hope—lies in ruins. The imigodoyi roam free, their roots tracing back to Mbeki’s patronage networks, a legacy that continues to choke our democracy.
We can’t undo the past, but we can demand accountability. We can rage against the elites Mbeki’s technocrats, Zuma’s cronies who sold our future for personal gain. We can weep for the South Africa that have been. It was a nation where the fruits of freedom reached every shack, every village, and every heart.
The time for half-truths and scapegoats is over. Thabo Mbeki must confront his role in this tragedy. He is not a bystander, but the architect of Mbeki’s patronage networks and the midwife of state capture. Our anger is righteous, our sorrow profound. South Africa deserves a better reckoning, a rebuilding, a return to the promise of 1994. Until then, we march on, hearts heavy, fists raised, demanding justice for a nation betrayed.
