ANC is so corrupt it cannot afford a strong and independent police force

South African writer and scholar Jonny Steinberg said that the ANC is so corrupt that it would avoid creating a strong, independent police force.

Steinberg shared his views on the problems at the South African Police Service during an interview with the Anti-Corruption Coalition and GIBS Business School.

He is one of South Africa’s top academics and taught at top institutions, including Oxford and Yale University.

He wrote numerous books, including many which focus on crime, the police, and gangsterism in South Africa.

His 2008 book, Thin Blue, for example, explores the unwritten rules of engagement between South African civilians and police.

In his GIBS Business School interview, Steinberg argued that South Africa has never had a functional separation between the ruling party and the police service.

He drew parallels between how the Apartheid regime and the post-1994 ANC government structured law enforcement.

He added that under the Mbeki administration, law enforcement was weaponised for internal party control within the ANC.

A good example is former National Police Commissioner Jackie Selebi, who was a Mbeki loyalist without policing experience.

According to Steinberg, Selebi ran a personalised system, routinely ordering senior officers to target specific political figures without cause.

Another controversial statement was that South African police officers see systemic corruption as understandable.

He argued that officers feel entitled to steal and engage in corruption because of severe debt, economic pressure, and the collapse of internal oversight.

The ANC is systemically corrupt

In the interview, Steinberg claimed that President Cyril Ramaphosa acted far too late to reform the police and that his attempt backfired.

He said that appointing acting ministers and police commissioners guaranteed that the corrupt status quo would simply wait him out.

He added that because the ANC is systemically corrupt, no ANC president can afford a genuinely independent investigative or prosecutorial body.

“A properly independent police force and independent investigative and prosecutorial service will mess with the ANC in ways a president won’t be able to control,” he said.

“Any ANC president, even if they themselves are clean and genuinely want a reformed, clean security apparatus, also has to manage a party.”

He explained that when a party, like the ANC, is systemically corrupt, its allies and key partners are inevitably at risk of investigation.

“You worry a great deal about what an investigative service outside of your control is going to do,” he said.

“What I’m saying is that I don’t know if that political will can come from the ANC now, simply because of the situation it finds itself in.”

“South Africa can have a president with enormous will, but they are constrained by the nature of the ANC, because they also need to manage that party.”

“We have reached a point where managing the party and maintaining an independent investigative and prosecutorial function are very hard to juggle at the same time.”