The ruling ANC is a 3 way alliance between the actual ANC (Nelson Mandela's party) , the largest trade union, and the South African Communist Party. They belie

The ruling ANC is a 3 way alliance between the actual ANC (Nelson Mandela's party) , the largest trade union, and the South African Communist Party. They believe in heavy handed intervention to help the economy grow. Amongst many other problems this includes a policy of cadre deployment. I.e the party faithful running all state institutions which are legislated to be monopolies as much as possible. Naturally the party faithful have zero skill in running the institution and need to deal out massive amounts of patronage to keep in favor. This includes all senior members of the justice cluster as well obviously. Even a saint would be corrupt in this environment. The old apartheid government were also heavily corrupt but managed to at least make sure state institutions were run by semi competent people and kept a limit on the amount of corruption. The ANC is also learnt from the apartheid government and like the good racists they have become have also steadily replaced staff of the wrong race in those institutions but haven't bothered worry about knowledge transfer so all the old seniors engineers who knew how and why things work are gone.