South Africa’s turbulent political climate, which has been rocked by accusations of State capture and the surprise Cabinet reshuffle in March, is set to continue, political analyst Justice Malala has warned.

“We are going through a time when we have outsourced our democracy,” he said on Friday, alluding to the accusations that Indian business moguls Ajay, Atul, Rajesh and Varun Gupta have used their relationships with President Jacob Zuma to influence South African policy making and political appointments.

Speaking at a business leadership breakfast hosted by the South African aggregate and sand producers industry body Aspasa, in Muldersdrift, Gauteng, Malala pointed out that the South African Council of Churches has warned that the country is teetering on the edge of becoming a “mafia state” if no action is taken against corruption.

The Public Affairs Research Institute (PARI) in May released a report, which stated that “a silent coup has taken place in South Africa” led by the Gupta family. Malala noted that the report suggests that “this one family has so much power . . . that they can do and say things to your elected representatives and those elected representatives act on that information. They are saying, essentially, our President [and] our leaders are in the pockets of this one family”.

He suggested that much of the country’s political future hinged on who would be elected to lead the African National Congress (ANC) when Zuma’s term ends, which would be determined by 5 000 of its members during a conference that will take place in December this year.

Malala noted that KwaZulu-Natal was the keystone in the election of an ANC President and, whichever candidate was able to secure the support of the ANC constituency in the province, would most likely also become the party’s president.

As such, he opined that the most likely candidate to win the election would be from President Zuma’s camp, who still enjoys a strong following in KwaZulu–Natal, a situation which was particularly favourable to Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, who has already secured the support of the ANC Youth League and ANC Women’s League.

If Dlamini-Zuma did become president of the ruling party, Malala warned that the turbulent political climate would likely remain.

He noted that the ANC’s Zweli Mkhize, who also enjoys a strong following in KwaZulu–Natal, could be the key in determining who becomes the next ANC president.

However, Malala asserted that the results of the next national election in 2019 were not so cut and dry, particularly after the ANC lost the votes in Johannesburg, Pretoria and Nelson Mandela Bay. He predicted that while ANC would likely take the national election, a strengthening opposition party would result in Gauteng falling to a coalition between the Democratic Alliance and the Economic Freedom Fighters.