In a 2010 Rolling Stone article the journalist Matt Taibbi famously described Goldman Sachs as "a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money." The bank has a relatively low key presence in Johannesburg, but it would be a mistake to therefore assume that South Africa doesn't have a giant vampire squid problem.
Indeed, there are three foreign companies operating in South Africa - all exhibiting similar squid-like tendencies - which immediately come to mind (there are certainly others).
The first and greatest vampire squid is of course the British arms company BAE. No sooner had South Africa made the difficult transition from white minority rule than their arms peddlers arrived - with the support and connivance of the British government - on a mission to corrupt and subvert the new African National Congress government (something that wasn't hard to do).
As we now know BAE offered R2bn or so in "special commissions" to senior ANC politicians and fixers to generate and then secure the R15bn LIFT and ALPHA contracts for the Hawk and Gripen aircraft. These were aircraft the SAAF did not want or need and which it could not afford.
These "commissions" were not just an inducement to the ANC to override normal procurement processes; they were a dagger aimed at the heart of South Africa's vulnerable new democracy. Once senior ANC leaders had accepted bribes to push ahead with the Arms Deal they had a compelling interest - over and above their pre-existing ideological inclinations - to break the independence of critical state institutions and thereby immunise themselves from investigation and prosecution.
The Arms Deal purchases decided in 1998 - and the ANC's strategy of cadre deployment adopted that same year - represent a nightmare from which our democracy is still trying to awake.