A new opinion piece by Ivor Chipkin, Executive Director and Co-Founder of the New South Institute (NSI), and Jelena Vidojević, Co-Founder of the NSI, has been published in The Conversation Africa. Titled “Political violence in South Africa is driven by a power elite trying to establish dominance – new research,” the article examines patterns of protest and political violence in South Africa and argues that they cannot be explained by socio-economic conditions alone. 

The piece draws in particular on their article “Elite Contestation in South Africa, 2006–2018: The Making and Unmaking of a Power Elite”, published online on 19 February 2026 in the Journal of Southern African Studies, as well as on the 2025 article “Elite Populism and the Ideology of State Capture: South Africa’s Warning for the United States and other Democracies”, which was published by Brave New Europe. Together, these works argue that waves of protest in South Africa are closely tied to struggles over power, patronage and institutional control within and around the African National Congress, rather than to service delivery failures alone. 

The argument also revisits state capture. Rather than treating it only as corruption or looting, Chipkin and Vidojević suggest that it functioned as a mechanism for consolidating a “power elite” able to exercise influence across political and economic institutions. In this reading, periods of relative protest stability reflected the temporary containment of elite contestation through patronage, coercion and the control of state resources. 

The article is especially timely in light of recent institutional reform in South Africa. The Public Service Amendment Act, 2025 (Act No. 9 of 2025) was assented to on 26 March 2026 and published in the Government Gazette on 1 April 2026. The Act provides for the devolution of administrative powers from executive authorities to heads of department, with the aim of reducing political interference in the public service. 

This reform is closely connected to work that the NSI has advanced over several years. In its statement following the enactment of the legislation, the Institute noted that it had helped develop the intellectual and technical foundation for the reform through research, policy work and sustained engagement with parliamentary and government processes. 

The full article is available via The Conversation Africa and has also been reshared by Ghana News.