Dreamers or schemers? Fears of “town capture” in a rural South African township

Abstract

Recent public corruption scandals in South Africa have created a social landscape where trust in the motives of businesspeople and politicians has sharply declined. I argue that a by-product of this is constraints on local brokers’ potential to act as change agents because they are perceived to be associated with the state and the market. This ethnographic case study explores the efforts of two community leaders-cum-brokers, from a small rural township, to transform a natural sand mine into a community enterprise. Their project received lacklustre support from local residents, who suspected it could be a cover for fraudulent dealings, a suspicion informed by fears of becoming entangled in corruption, whether willingly or unwittingly. I also discuss how the metaphor of “state capture” has been scaled down to the local level and used by residents to make sense of both the town’s lack of development and the limits to enacting change.