Filling the Gapp T2S2

The Eastern Cape is one worst-run provinces in South Africa, where some of the gravest effects of decades of corruption have left the province's health care system broken and unable to deal with the huge surge of Covid-19 infections.
On the day controversial ANC councillor Andile Lungisa was released on bail from prison for an assault conviction in 2016, we look at the widespread looting and disfunction of the Eastern Cape's biggest city, Nelson Mandela Bay. Formally called Port Elizabeth, it's a hotbed of contestation which reveals how the municipal government was abused by powerful figures. You can see the same pattern in other provinces.
Joining us are two well-known political commentators who have both recently written books on the region.
Dr Crispian Olver was the Director-General for the Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism and helped draft some of the legislation we're talking about today. The medical doctor was a well-known political activist in the Eastern Cape, and was sent by the ANC leaders to try fix the mess in the city. His book, How to Steal a City, published in 2017, is a gripping, insider’s account of the corruption in Nelson Mandela Bay, formerly known as Port Elizabeth. It lays bare how the administration was entirely captured and bled dry by a criminal syndicate, and how factional politics within the ruling party abetted that corruption.
Prof Mcebisi Ndletyana is a respected political analyst whose book – Anatomy of the ANC in Power: Insights from Port Elizabeth, 1990-2019 – shows just how rotten things can get without proper governance. He's a professor in the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Johannesburg.
The podcast is hosted by Doctor Ivor Chipkin, the founder of the Public Affairs Research Institute at Wits University, who today runs South Africa’s first global think-tank on government, called GAPP.

Hosted by Dr Ivor Chipkin, Filling the Gapp is a deep dive into the reasons that South Africa's government has evolved into what it is today – and potentially how to rebuild it.
Chipkin is the founder of the Public Affairs Research Institute (PARI) at Wits University, and today runs South Africa’s first global think-tank on government, GAPP.
He was the key author of Betrayal of the Promise Report on State Capture, a seminal 2017 expose of corruption and the anti-constitutional rule of the Jacob Zuma administration.
He has a PhD from Ecole Normale Superieure, France, and was an Oppenheimer Fellow at Oxford. He is the author of two books.
He is one of the leading scholars on government; thinking about government; and thinking about government policy.