Deputy Finance Minister Mcebisi Jonas has warned of the nefarious impact patronage networks could have on the South African state in an article penned for the weekly South African Communist Party newsletter Umsebenzi.

Jonas begins the article by stating debates on state capture tend to be about failed states, and says luckily this was not true of South Africa.

However he adds: “This in turn should not suggest that issues of state capture are unimportant. The emergence of debates, discussions and engagements pertaining to state capture and associated patronage networks in recent weeks, require us to question and critically examine the potential impact such networks could have on the South African state, economy and society. We also need to consider the repercussions of not dealing with these issues in a coherent and very direct manner.”

The deputy minister, who last month confirmed that he was offered the post of finance minister by the wealthy Gupta family late last year, goes on to rubbish notions “that have been peddled largely through ANN7 and The New Age – that the recent backlash against state capture has been sponsored by so-called white monopoly capital”.

He takes an even dimmer view of the theory that “comrades such as (Finance Minister) Pravin Gordhan and myself have been inserted in our positions, to safeguard the interests of white monopoly capital”.

Jonas said the lively discourse and critical media reporting in South Africa meant that political dirty laundry was aired in public and what had been revealed in recent weeks bode ill for the future.

“There is no escaping the fact that it seriously undermines our ability to lead society through the current phase of the NDR (national democratic revolution).

“In its worst iteration, political office can become associated with possibilities for personal wealth accumulation, what is often referred to as the ‘commercialisation of politics’,” he writes.

“This could have the effect of changing the focus and practice of politics away from driving fundamental socio-economic transformation (as envisaged in the Freedom Charter) towards managing national and transnational business networks that service the wealth acquisition of politically-connected elite. This is a grave danger that we must not allow to infect our movement.”