The first two publications deal with the Bosasa tender-rigging and supply-chain scandal while the latter is an account of the disastrous private management of the Mangaung maximum security prison in Bloemfontein by the multinational corporation G4S.
Bosasa facilitated state capture interdepartmentally by making off with departmental funds for bogus projects at vastly inflated prices at the cost of legitimate projects. G4S took money away from projects that could enable people to lead more satisfying lives . Both these manifestations of state capture are, however, branches of the same tree known as the prison-industrial complex, generating expense for prisonisation without actual need. Vested interests masquerade as justifiable interests.
Another angle is for government to ensure that structural oppressions that encourage crime stay firmly in place to ensure work for the merchants of despair – Bosasa and G4S. Michelle Alexander, a well-known prison abolitionist in the US, explores the idea that ex-offenders are denied meaningful resettlement in society and continue to be recycled in and out of prison in the following tantalising words: “The disturbing phenomenon of people cycling in and out of prison, trapped by their second-class status, has been described by Loic Wacquant as a ‘closed circuit of perpetual marginality’.