The Criminalization of the State in Africa

TLDR

The book argues that African states have become vehicles for organized crime, with widespread fraud, smuggling, resource plunder, privatization of institutions, private armies, and connections to global criminal networks, and that social capital norms facilitate public office misuse, making Africa’s formal economy the largest and its criminal economy the largest on the continent. The authors aim to develop criteria for measuring state criminalization and to distinguish it from earlier corruption, applying these concepts to South Africa’s long‑standing crime‑politics nexus. They construct a prognosis framework that uses the proposed criteria to assess whether a state’s corruption has evolved into criminalization. Their analysis shows South Africa as a hub of international crime, especially the drug trade, and concludes that liberal economic reforms have unintentionally fostered new corruption.

Abstract

This book examines the growth of fraud and smuggling in African states, the plundering of natural resources, the privatization of state institutions, the development of an economy of plunder and the growth of private armies. It suggests that the state itself is becoming a vehicle for organized criminal activity. The authors propose criteria for gauging the criminalization of African states and present a novel prognosis: they distinguish between the corruption of previous decades and the criminalization of some African states now taking place. Major operators are now able to connect with global criminal networks. Also, the notion of social capital has led to current attitudes towards the use of public office for personal enrichment, or even systematic illegality. Looking at South Africa, the authors examine the decades-long tradition of association between crime and politics in this area. South Africa is now the centre of important international patterns of crime, notably in the drug trade. It has Africa's largest formal economy and the continent's largest criminal economy. Considering the economic origins of official implication in crime, the authors conclude that new forms of corruption have been unintentionally helped by liberal economic reforms.