PETER HAIN | The rotten heirloom that greedy liberators embrace

Social media posts often claim corruption is intrinsic to black majority rule, when it was endemic under white colonialism and occurs under white majority rule too.

Another common refrain is that though the apartheid regime may have been “brutal” it was at least “honest”. Actually, apartheid-entrenched corruption simply continued after the transition to democracy in 1994.

The apartheid governing class was riddled with corruption arising from decades of unassailable, unaccountable power and from secret projects such as setting up pro-government newspapers and propaganda fronts, seeking offensive chemical weapons capabilities and evading sanctions.

Hundreds of millions of rands disappeared from secret apartheid government funds, something president Jacob Zuma emulated during his infamous state capture decade.

The ANC also adopted National Party precedent by forming companies that obtained state contracts to produce a steady stream of party income.

Africa may well have had a plague of corruption, but Africans are not inherently more or less corrupt than anybody else.

Nor are black Africans any more corrupt than white Europeans, as some of my critics have either implied or brazenly asserted: among them white racists unreconciled to democracy and unwilling to acknowledge how corrupt apartheid was.

Newly liberated or independent countries are more likely than not to perpetuate corruption by former colonial rulers or, in South Africa’s case, both those and apartheid rulers.

This is no justification for former liberation leaders turned government ministers or senior public servants to be corrupt; instead, it stands as an explanation underlining historical and systemic continuities rather than individual frailties.

The conclusion of Prof Zamokuhle Mbandlwa of the Durban University of Technology is that many African liberation movements have “mastered the tactics of the colonial masters and oppressors” to implement a new “neocolonialism system” for their people.

President Nelson Mandela in 1995 warned that it was vital to end the apartheid era of “underhand dealings”, “lawlessness” and corruption, but his warning was ignored both by his own ANC and the business community.

An important bunch of culprits are the professional enablers — lawyers, consultants, auditors, accountants and estate agents — who clean looted money for a fee by disguising the source, location and ownership

An important bunch of culprits are the professional enablers — lawyers, consultants, auditors, accountants and estate agents — who “clean” looted money for a fee by disguising the source, location and ownership.

Lawyers typically assist by setting up complex shell companies that enable money to be moved to a country where there is low transparency.

Accountants typically audit incorrectly or flimsily, leaving suspicious transactions hidden. Estate agents typically receive laundered money into their client accounts during property purchases.

Such behaviour is contrary to the ethics of their professions, but that didn’t get in the way of global brands such as McKinsey, KPMG, SAP and Bain & Co during the Gupta looting spree.

These supposedly reputable firms profited while the Guptas looted funds that could have been spent on essential public services and on helping to repair the colossal damage caused by apartheid, still a huge deadweight on the country.

Up until now, governments have only paid lip-service to curbing financial crime. The UK and South Africa, for example, both have strict anti-money laundering regulations. But the Guptas seem to have easily managed to evade this legislation with the assistance of South African public officials and London-based banks and professional enablers.

As the rulers of newly independent countries created tax- and money-laundering regimes to keep dirty money flowing, the governments of the US, the UK, India, China and countries in the Middle East failed to co-ordinate action to curb global looting and bring its perpetrators to justice.

Kleptocrats have ravaged populations with the help of global corporates and banks. Illicit billions have been invested in the real estate market in London, which is infamous for money laundering by oligarchs and others. UK overseas territories from the Caribbean to Gibraltar have remained money-laundering hotspots.

Globalisation and digitisation have made it much easier for criminals to disperse tainted funds to countries unconnected to the underlying crime.

And top criminals and money launderers still get away with it while the average honest citizen is increasingly smothered in red tape.

One law for international criminals, quite another for ordinary citizens.

Unless the UK, US, Chinese, Indian and UAE governments co-operate with each other, state capture will happen again, in South Africa or elsewhere.

Perhaps anti-apartheid and liberation campaigners like my youthful self expected too much: that liberation would bring something qualitatively different, more just, or even more moral, and not Zuma’s shameless looting or Daniel Ortega’s betrayal in Nicaragua.

Surely the overriding lesson is that the fights against corruption and for democracy and justice, equal opportunities and human rights are never permanently won.

They are battles that have to be fought forever, with constant vigilance and fortitude by new generations.

Peter Hain, a former anti-apartheid and British politician, is the author

• Liberation and Corruption: Why freedom movements fail (Jonathan Ball) will be published on October 30