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Beyond Marikana: The Post-Apartheid South African State

August 2012
Afrika Spectrum: Deutsche Zeitschrift für Gegenwartsbezogene Afrikaforschung 47(2):33-62

DOI:10.1177/000203971204702-303

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University of the Witwatersrand

This article situates the Marikana massacre, in which 34 mine workers were gunned down by police in South Africa, in the context of what the South African state has become, and questions the characterisation of the post-Apartheid state as a "developmental state". This contribution first highlights what is at stake when the post-Apartheid state is portrayed as a "developmental state" and how this misrecognition of the state is ideologically constituted. Second, it argues for an approach to understanding the post-Apartheid state by locating it within the context of the rise of transnational neoliberalism and the process of indigenising neoliberalism on the African continent. Third, it examines the actual economic practices of the state that constitute it as an Afro-neoliberal state. Such economic practices are historicised to show the convergence between the post-Apartheid state and the ideal type neoliberal state coming to the fore in the context of global neoliberal restructuring and crisis management. The article concludes by recognising that South Africa's deep globalisation and globalised state affirm a form of state practice beyond utilising market mechanisms that includes perpetrating violence to secure its existence. Marikana makes this point.

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Africa Spectrum 2-3/2012: 33-62

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Beyond Marikana: The Post-Apartheid

South African State

Vishwas Satgar

Abstract: This article situates the Marikana massacre, in which 34 mine

workers were gunned down by police in South Africa, in the context of what

the South African state has become, and questions the characterisation of

the post-Apartheid state as a “developmental state”. This contribution first

highlights what is at stake when the post-Apartheid state is portrayed as a

“developmental state” and how this misrecognition of the state is ideologi-

cally constituted. Second, it argues for an approach to understanding the

post-Apartheid state by locating it within the context of the rise of transna-

tional neoliberalism and the process of indigenising neoliberalism on the

African continent. Third, it examines the actual economic practices of the

state that constitute it as an Afro-neoliberal state. Such economic practices

are historicised to show the convergence between the post-Apartheid state

and the ideal type neoliberal state coming to the fore in the context of global

neoliberal restructuring and crisis management. The article concludes by

recognising that South Africa’s deep globalisation and globalised state affirm

a form of state practice beyond utilising market mechanisms that includes

perpetrating violence to secure its existence. Marikana makes this point.

 Manuscript received 13 May 2012; accepted 29 September 2012

Keywords: South Africa, globalisation, neoliberalism, state, Marikana massacre

Vishwas Satgar is a senior lecturer in International Relations at the Univer-

sity of Witwatersrand in South Africa. His research work is on African po-

litical economy, empire and crisis, and transnational alternatives. He is a

founding member of the Academic Network for Development and Inequal-

ity Research and the online journal Rethinking Development and Inequality, and

he serves on the editorial collective of Amandla Magazine and the Develop-

ment Studies Board at WITS University. He has been a grass-roots activist in

South Africa for the past 28 years, serves on the Cooperative Banks Devel-

opment Agency Board and is the chairperson of the board of the Coopera-

tive and Policy Alternative Center (COPAC).

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Vishwas Satgar

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On 16 August 2012 post-Apartheid South Africa experienced what has been

called the Marikana massacre. Striking mine workers were gunned down by

police at the Lonmin platinum mine. Media and academic reports confirmed

that most of the 34 miners were shot in the back while fleeing from the police,

suggesting premeditated action. Moreover, the surviving workers were ini-

tially charged using Apartheid-era legislation and deemed to have perpe-

trated the murder of their fellow workers. Due to civil society outrage, this

charge has been temporarily suspended, and the government has also or-

dered heavy police and military presence along the Platinum Belt, effectively

suspending constitutional rights to protest, undermining the constitutional

right of mine workers to strike, and imposing an undeclared state of emer-

gency. Throughout this tragic saga, key government ministers, including the

Minister for Minerals and Energy and the Minister for Trade and Industry,

have openly attempted to assure international investors that South Africa is

a safe destination for investment and that investments in mining are very

secure. What does the Marikana massacre, including the assuaging of foreign

investors’ concerns by ministers in the aftermath of this tragedy, mean for

the character and role of the post-Apartheid state? Put differently, is the

Marikana massacre simply a manifestation of what the state has become in

South Africa?

The post-Apartheid state form is contested ideologically and politically in

South Africa. National liberation ideology historically – particularly through

the African National Congress’ (ANC) programmatic Freedom Charter – au-

thorised state intervention as a crucial part of non-racial nation-building. At

the same time, legitimate grass-roots expectations expressed the need for a

“national popular” project in which the logic of state-centric development

occupied a crucial place in economic transformation alongside other devel-

opment logics. However, these conceptions of state-led development did not

materialise with the election of the first post-Apartheid democratic govern-

ment in 1994. Instead, during nearly two decades of freedom, South Africa’s

liberation movement internalised a neoliberal approach to economic man-

agement, and after half a decade of such economic management it declared

the post-Apartheid state a “developmental state”.

This article questions the characterisation of the post-Apartheid state

form as a “developmental state”. To interrogate this question, it draws on

neo-Gramscian global political economy, which is well established in the dis-

cipline of international relations and has two important starting points as a

critical mode of analysis: First, it recognises that the state form cannot be

treated as an ontological given existing outside history. In other words, the

state as a crucial social actor has to be historicised to understand the origins

of its various institutional forms and how it is constituted and shaped by

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Beyond Marikana: The Post-Apartheid South African State

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social forces, both domestic and international. Second, social and theoretical

analysis is never neutral and is always for someone and toward some end. In

this regard, neo-Gramscian global political economy has a normative under-

pinning in pursuit of social justice and progressive transformation.

The article begins by highlighting what is at stake by characterising the

post-Apartheid state as a “developmental state” and explaining how this

misrecognition is ideologically constituted. Second, the article argues for an

approach to understanding the post-Apartheid state by locating it within the

context of the rise of transnational neoliberalism and the process of indigen-

ising neoliberalism on the African continent. It examines how post-Apart-

heid South Africa’s choice to embrace global capitalist restructuring (other-

wise known as “globalisation”) favoured the interests of transnational capital

and created the conditions for transnationalising monopolistic relations of

production beyond a nationally bounded mode of production. The embrace

of neoliberalism and the deepening of South Africa’s integration into global

circuits of accumulation brought to an end a discourse of “South African

exceptionalism”. Instead, South Africa became one of many laboratories of

“Afro-neoliberalism” – that is, neoliberalism with African characteristics.

Moreover, this article examines what the actual economic practices of the

state are that make it, more precisely, an Afro-neoliberal state. Such economic

practices display a convergence between the actual post-Apartheid state and

the ideal type neoliberal state form in the context of global neoliberal restruc-

turing. This article identifies and shows how the various economic manage-

ment practices of the state recompose it into an Afro-neoliberal state form

while engendering an extroverted, competitive and enclave-based accumula-

tion model. This contribution historicises the economic management practices

of the post-Apartheid state form as part of the conjuncture of constituting the

Afro-neoliberal state (1996 to the present).

The Post-Apartheid Developmental

State in Question

The twentieth-century developmental state has been characterised as a state

leading catch-up industrialisation, a state that uses intervention to bring

about structural change and provide a basis for capital accumulation (Chang

2002). Such states have shifted from high-growth, low-tech economies to

high-growth and high-tech economies. In this regard, the developmental

state literature has attempted to bring the state “back in” by looking closely

at how developmental states have led such processes of structural change.

This literature has constituted an iconic framing of successful “Asian Ti-

gers” such as Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and more recently China. While

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Vishwas Satgar

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this literature has not framed developmental state models, it has pointed to

crucial reforms and state practices that portend what is possible. Such expe-

riences and literature point to various “success” or “failure” factors that

could provide a basis for mimetic learning and diffusion (see Amsden 1989

and 2001; Evans 1995; Chibber 2003).

However, the experience of the developmental state is also about the

relationship between visions of developmentalism, conceptions of the state

and how these are articulated through nationalism. In a path-breaking text

on the emergence of the developmental state and state-guided capitalist

development in East Asia, Chalmers Johnson in Miti and the Japanese Miracle

(1982), highlights how an effective institutional system evolved over time

through a learning process and out of different crisis moments in Japanese

capitalist development. While such a system was anchored in a prioritisation

of developmentalism over time, it developed a repertoire of policy tools and

mechanisms to actualise this. However, Johnson (1982: 307) provided a cau-

tion in 1982 still relevant today:

It may be possible to borrow Japan’s priorities and institutions, but

the situational nationalism of its people during the 1950s and 1960s is

something another people will have to develop, not borrow.

This point about the mobilising role of nationalism to achieve national eco-

nomic goals is also underlined by Woo-Cumings. She writes,

Johnson places the “binding agent” of East Asian development in

both the context of “late development” and the East Asian setting of

revolutionary nationalism – not a garden-variety nationalism but one

that grew from war and imperialism and manifested itself variously:

communism in China and North Korea, and the capitalist develop-

mental state in Japan, South Korea and Taiwan” (Woo-Cumings

1999: 7).

Similarly, in France such a national consciousness after World War II was

evoked not by appealing to “growth” or to some technical economic out-

come; Loriaux (1999: 252-253) shows how “moral ambition” played a sub-

stantial role in mobilising developmental ambitions within the national con-

sciousness. Moreover, the study of various national histories about these

ambitions makes it seem as if the

developmental-state elite pursue moral goods whose definition is in-

formed by a certain mythological construction of how the world

works and what we can and should accomplish (Loriaux 1999: 253).

In the South African context, the nationalism of national liberation forged a

national identity in the context of overcoming Apartheid. A new South Afri-

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Beyond Marikana: The Post-Apartheid South African State

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canness emerged through programmatic politics grounded in the adoption of

the Freedom Charter in 1955 at the Congress of the People. While this national-

ism declared a non-racial alternative to racialised oppression it also recognised

that racial inequities had to be addressed through state-led transformation. In

many ways, the utopian element of a non-racial nationalism for South Africa

envisaged a state-centric developmental project: either social democratic, rev-

olutionary nationalist or Soviet socialist. The state loomed large in the imagi-

nary of national liberation despite its various ideological inflections. However,

the narrative of state-led redistribution, industrial development and transfor-

mation lost its moorings in a post-Apartheid context due to the shortcomings

of the national liberation project and its neoliberalisation.

In the post-Apartheid South African context, the mobilising role of na-

tionalism to achieve a developmental state has been confused by different

visions of the state and developmentalism. In other words, the form and

functions of the state are cloaked in different ideological representations of

the state. In this regard, the voice of South African labour and its project for

the post-Apartheid state has been central. The labour movement, particularly

the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), envisioned a “dem-

ocratic corporatist state” (Satgar 2008). Labour’s support of a democratic

corporatist state came out of intense struggles with the Apartheid regime re-

garding labour market reforms. Between 1990 and 1996, the labour movement

advanced three crucial elements that together, it was hoped, would form the

basis of a democratic corporatist state: the Reconstruction and Development

Programme (RDP) that promoted a redistributive agenda for government; the

creation and formalisation of the National Economic Development and La-

bour Council (NEDLAC) as a macro-bargaining space over state policy; and

the Industrial Strategy Project that gave COSATU an opportunity to help

shape industrial development. Like the progressive rhetoric of national libera-

tion ideology, the progressive thrusts of these three demands coming from

labour have merely obscured the actual character of the emergent post-Apart-

heid state. Most of these demands did not come to fruition as South Africa’s

transition embraced neoliberalism. Today, COSATU clings to the macro-

bargaining space – NEDLAC – as the most important basis for driving state

policy, while at the same time, this macro-bargaining space has been undercut

by macro-economic adjustment and industrial restructuring led by the state

(Buhlungu 2010).

Moreover, the general approach to the developmental state has been

propagandistic and declaratory. The first articulation of the developmental

state emerged in the early 2000s after an intense period of political strife in

the ruling ANC-led alliance over the adoption of neoliberal macro-economic

policy (Marais 2011: 338-352). After achieving a degree of stabilisation of

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Vishwas Satgar

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the South African economy, but while continuing neoliberalisation, the no-

tion of a “developmental state” entered South Africa’s policy discourse.

Under former President Thabo Mbeki (1999–2008) – one of the key archi-

tects of South Africa’s neoliberalisation – the South African state consist-

ently declared itself a “developmental state”. Mbeki’s State of the Nation

addresses in parliament underlined this (cf. Buhlungu et al. 2006 and 2007).

Using developmental-state rhetoric helped legitimate the state’s contradic-

tions: While many in the government claimed the state was developmental,

it simultaneously pursued neoliberal policies that undermined the nation’s

developmental aspirations. This rhetorical move collapsed a normative am-

bition about what the South African state should be with the reality of the existing

state. This was further reinforced at a major national conference in 2007, at

which the ruling ANC firmly embraced a “hybrid developmental state”

which would bring together the European welfare state and the East Asian

developmental state. In his 2012 State of the Nation address (Zuma 2012),

President Jacob Zuma declared,

As a developmental state that is located at the centre of a mixed econ-

omy, we see our role as being to lead and guide the economy and to

intervene in the interest of the poor, given the history of our country.

Despite this declaration, the general contours of neoliberal macro-economic

management have not shifted.

There have also been various declaratory voices from below claiming

the South African state to be developmental: Many journalists, commenta-

tors and academics argue that any kind of state intervention is evidence that

the state is developmental or leaning towards being a developmental state

(Gelb 2006). Such arguments, however, ignore the fact that a great deal of

state intervention focuses on creating conditions for externalised dynamics

of accumulation and not the promotion of state-led industrialisation that

was a hallmark of the earlier generation of developmental states.1 Moreover,

such a position inadvertently legitimates a shift in neoliberal discourse that

warrants state intervention. For example, the World Bank authorises state

intervention, but in a way that supports marketisation (World Bank 1997).

In the case of industrial policy, “neoliberalism is not just constraining in-

dustrial policy, it is redirecting it” (Evans 2005: 203). Similarly, the current

South African state supports regulatory interventionism to bolster market

efficiency; the state does not retreat but is remade to buttress the rule of

transnational capital and to provide conditions for its reproduction.

1 This is not to argue for ecologically destructive industrialisation. Rather, in the

twenty-first century a more eco-centric industrialisation is necessary and possible

for countries in the global periphery as part of achieving structural transformation.

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Beyond Marikana: The Post-Apartheid South African State

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In short, the forces shaping the post-Apartheid state are not pushing it

toward being a developmental state, despite the state’s discourse. At the

same time, the declaratory developmental-state discourse has not suffused

nation-building in a way that mobilises social forces around common eco-

nomic goals and a shared moral ambition. South Africa does not have a

shared consensus and imaginary around advancing a developmental state, let

alone a twenty-first-century conception: a state that is about widening pop-

ular democracy, ensuring eco-centric production, engendering “bit-based”

sources of growth and building human capabilities to support such high-

tech development (Evans 2010). The practices of the state that most South

Africans experience seem to undermine these pretensions. South Africa has

been de-industrialising as the post-Apartheid state has driven the globalisa-

tion of the economy and as it has remade itself in this conjuncture (Marais

2011). So, if the post-Apartheid state is not developmental, then what is it?

To understand the ideological character of the South African state requires

placing it squarely within the process of global neoliberal restructuring.

Neoliberalisation and the End of

South African Exceptionalism

The notion of “South Africa” has been inscribed with various meanings

within the struggle for national liberation. In particular, mainstream libera-

tion movement theory has consistently referenced the South African social

formation as a “colonialism of a special type” – a theoretical category uti-

lised most prominently by the South African Communist Party (SACP). Due

to an institutionalised and regulated form of racism perpetrated by the

Apartheid regime and white monopoly capital, South Africa occupied an

exceptional place within the global consciousness. In the transition to de-

mocracy, liberal articulations of South Africa have continued to imbue it

with atypical qualities. From the “rainbow nation” to the “democractic mir-

acle”, South African exceptionalism has been consistently affirmed (see

Waldmeir 1997). The much vaunted ANC-led liberation movement has also

exaggerated South African exceptionalism as it has neoliberalised South

Africa through its rule; it has styled itself as the harbinger of a “neoliberal-

ism of a special type”.

However, the approach to South Africa and the post-Apartheid state in

this contribution locates it within a global process of capitalist restructuring.

According to Gill (1994: 170), this is a process shaped by a dialectic of dis-

integration/reintegration in what he describes as “patterned disorder”. This

means social, economic and political structures of the world order are being

transformed or are breaking down but the new structures are only just be-

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ginning to become identifiable. In this context, placing in perspective the rise

of transnational neoliberalism is crucial to understanding how transnational

capital has been constituted, state forms remade and global processes of ac-

cumulation restructured. Transnational neoliberalism has three important

aspects: First, it is an accumulation strategy, or growth model, which attempts

to reproduce transnational relations of production. Underpinning this is a

policy agenda that favours marketisation and financialisation through privati-

sation, liberalisation, deregulation and monetarist macro-economic policy

consistent with adjusting national markets to “get prices right” and meet the

imperatives of transnational capital.

Second, transnational neoliberalism is the ideology of transnational

capital, a worldview attempting to realise a global “market civilisation” (Gill

2003). Such a “market civilisation” is premised on a possessive individualism

and competition. As a class ideology it is also a material force that operation-

alises itself through its own mechanisms of discipline and control informed

by specific class objectives within social relations of production. It also has

material effects on social structures and practices. In this sense, it is implicated

in class struggles and is constituted by transnationalising class forces. In

short, transnational neoliberalism is a historical structure shaping the current

world order through a US-led bloc of transnational class and social forces.

Third, transnational neoliberalism has been referred to as a form of “gov-

ernmentality”, “governance” and even class rule. However, underpinning

these various conceptual approaches is the recognition that the contempo-

rary state form is remade by transnational neoliberalism not to serve the

political subjectivity of citizens but to ensure that the sovereignty of capital

is protected from risk.

Transnational neoliberalism did not invent the global expansion of

capital but has been articulated to it as part of capital’s response to the ac-

cumulation crisis of the early 1970s. Over the past three decades, the pro-

cess of global neoliberal restructuring has engendered four major structural

shifts in the global political economy:2 First, through liberalising financial

markets, the structural power of finance capital has been enhanced. A global

offshore financial market has been constituted, which allows for high-speed

speculative flows in variable directions. Second, a post-Fordist global pro-

duction structure has emerged and has reconfigured the spatial division of

labour across and between national boundaries. Third, the past three dec-

ades have witnessed a rise of transnational firms, which have become the

backbone of the global political economy. These firms provide the material

2 In this regard, there is an important global political economy literature that captures

these trends. See, for instance, Strange (1994), Cox (1994), Gill (2003) and Sa-

kamoto (1994).

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Beyond Marikana: The Post-Apartheid South African State

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and objective basis for the existence of a transnational capitalist class. Fi-

nally, global convergence around the neoliberal state form has also been a

major structural shift – in the literature sometimes referred to as the “com-

petition state” or “internationalised state”.3 Such a conception of the state

has changed in its role and functions to the extent that the state does not en-

gage in strategic intervention in the economy. Instead, the state regulates eco-

nomic processes such that market efficiencies can be enhanced. More specifi-

cally, the mode of state regulation is such that the state does not pursue out-

comes but rather ensures that rules are established and enforced to create a

“balanced playing field” for market forces (Soederberg et al. 2005: 17).

Drawing on the “internationalised state” and the “competition state”

literature, it would seem the neoliberal ideal type state has taken on four key

characteristics in practice:

1. It is internationalised in the sense that it is locked into global market

structures that impact the national through multilateral processes, in-

stitutions and ideological structures shaped by a US-led transnational

historical bloc of social forces.

2. It emphasises the use of monetary policy (supply-side economics) to

manage inflation and to ensure fiscal and non-fiscal resources are allo-

cated according to global market signals.

3. It dismantles self sufficiency in “ring-fenced” or strategic sectors and

shifts toward organising state responses based on competitive advantage.

4. It promotes a culture of capitalist accumulation on the terms of trans-

national capital and through private enterprise, individual initiative and

a philosophy of enrichment.

It would also seem that from the viewpoint of the neoliberal ideal type state

that Africa has been deemed to have the most number of “failed states”. In

the wider context of Africa, the idea of a failed state has various meanings

and implications. In particular, it reinforces certain racialised stereotypes

about African rule and is often associated with imperial representations of

the postcolonial state within Western social science (Bilgin and Morton

2002: 55-80), thus justifying various forms of paternalistic intervention, from

military incursions to aid and relief work. Furthermore, the notion of failed

states has tended to flatten out the African reality and to conflate diverse ex-

3 The conception of a neoliberal/Afro-neoliberal state form draws on two important

literatures: One deals with the conceptual and empirical aspects of an internationalised

state in the global political economy. See Held and Mcgrew (1994), Hitti (1994) and

Kamo (1994), for example. The other literature deals with the concept and theory of

the “competition state”, in particular its theoretical pedigree, assumptions and empiri-

cal features. See Palan et al. (1999) and Soederberg et al. (2005).

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periences. Mkandawire (2001) points to an analytical literature in the 1980s

and 1990s that claimed that African developmental states were not possible.

However, he argues against this by historicising diverse postcolonial experi-

ences and shows that many African countries from independence up until

the mid 1970s displayed a developmental orientation. This was lost in the

context of the “great transformation” of neoliberalisation.

The extent to which the post-Apartheid state has taken on the charac-

teristics of the neoliberal ideal type will be empirically highlighted to sub-

stantiate the conjuncture of the Afro-neoliberal state form since 1996. In

this sense, South African exceptionalism has ended. While this perspective

overlaps in some ways with the work of other critical political economists, it

is distinctive. Fine (2010), for example, while noting the constraints of macro-

economic policy on the realisation of a South African developmental state, as

well as the inherent limits of the developmental state paradigm, concentrates

his critique on the absence of the conditions necessary to realise a develop-

mental state: institutional capacity and strategic state/capital engagements.

His approach is grounded in an understanding of the Minerals Energy

Complex (MEC) – which is about a symbiotic relationship between state

and capital and core activities related to mining and energy such as minerals

extraction, heavy metals, heavy chemicals and fossil-fuel-generated electricity

– and from this perspective recommends policy alternatives. This contribu-

tion highlights the limits of realising a developmental state in South Africa

by trying to make intelligible what the state is and how it works in the context of

global neoliberal restructuring. This relates directly to the next point about

the end of South African exceptionalism.

More specifically, South African exceptionalism has ended in terms of

how it indigenises transnational neoliberalism as the basis for an accumula-

tion model. The end of South African exceptionalism began with the Apart-

heid regime in the 1980s adopting firm monetary policy directed at curtailing

inflation, liberalising exchange controls for a brief moment and attempting

to restructure bloated and inefficient state parastatals. In the midst of this,

the globalisation of the South African economy through financial capital

(internal and external) also became discernible. “Capital flight” out of the

economy together with the outward movement by finance capital in the late

1980s and early 1990s were the first signs of internally driven globalisation

(Allen 2006: 49). South African monopoly capital increasingly began dis-

playing signs of having transcended national capitalism. This trend became

more sharply defined in the post-Apartheid context. With the ANC gov-

ernment taking on the debt obligations of the Apartheid regime, macro-

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Beyond Marikana: The Post-Apartheid South African State

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economic management was locked into a neoliberal trajectory.4 After accept-

ing a loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the first post-Apart-

heid “democracy budget” (1994/1995) echoed the IMF’s language of

“macro-economic stability”.

By 1996, the neoliberal accumulation trajectory was further entrenched

with the adoption of a monetarist macro-economic policy. The Growth,

Employment and Redistribution (GEAR) macro-economic policy framework

was initially defended by ANC ideologues and ministers as a “home-grown

approach” to restructuring and adjustment. It was even suggested that GEAR

was necessary to stabilise South Africa’s macro-economy. Ironically, an earlier,

self-induced move by the ANC government created the conditions for insta-

bility. An attempted reform of exchange controls prompted a run on and

massive devaluation of the South African rand, providing the ideal oppor-

tunity to impose GEAR. GEAR not only conformed to key prescriptions of

transnational neoliberalism but also resonated with ideas put forward by

monopoly capital.5 This conservative macro-economic framework was more

than a stabilisation package. It provided the most important and unambigu-

ous signal to monopoly and transnational capital about the direction in

which the new ANC government was taking the South African economy,

further confirming the ANC government’s commitment to globalising the

economy from within.

South Africa’s choice of a neoliberal development path was not inevi-

table or necessary. In reality it is the outcome of class and social struggles in

which an Afro-neoliberal state has been engendered.6 Such an Afro-neolib-

eral state has been both cause and effect of the externalisation and restruc-

turing of South Africa’s political economy into an enclave-based accumula-

tion model. Post-Apartheid capitalism has emulated and innovated as it has

encountered and internalised neoliberalism. In this process, national libera-

tion ideology, as an articulation of ruling-party ideology, has been responsi-

ble for indigenising and giving an African voice to neoliberalism. This is not

exceptional but merely an expression of a trend affecting every corner of the

4 Allen (2006: 31-68) highlights how the moratorium on 13.62 billion USD owed to

233 banks reached a firm resolution in only 1993, when the ANC was drawn into

the final phase of these negotiations in which it accepted responsibility for the re-

maining debt obligations of the Apartheid regime.

5 In the Department of Finance Summary Document (1996), there were 11 key ele-

ments in the proposed package, including a commitment to privatisation tariff reduc-

tions, inflation-driven monetary policy, and so on. Also see Bond (2000) and Satgar

(2008) in which the class dynamics of this ideological shift are further elaborated.

6 This article does not foreground these struggles from below given the focus on the

ideological representation and constitutive economic practices of the state from

above. See Bond (2000) and Satgar (2008).

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Vishwas Satgar

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global political economy. In the African context, a nationally articulated

variant of neoliberalism placed post-Apartheid South Africa in a race to

ideologically “catch up” with a neoliberalising Africa, tragically caught in the

grip of “Afro-neoliberalism”.7

South Africa’s neoliberalisation expresses this continental trend and is a

version of continental “Afro-neoliberalism”, a neoliberalism with African

characteristics. This kind of specificity helps bring into view the role of na-

tional class and social forces within neoliberalisation. It closes the gap where

everything was blamed on the “Washington Consensus” and prompts us to

look more holistically to also identify who domestically has gone to bed with

transnational capital. According to a growing body of academic work, the

neoliberalisation of the world has prompted a conclusion regarding the end

of national capitalisms (Soederberg et al. 2005). It is argued that we are wit-

nessing the emergence of transnational neoliberal capitalism but with na-

tional and even regional varieties. National accumulation processes are being

transnationalised such that monopoly capitalism is being reconstituted as

transnational capitalism (Palan et al. 1999: 19). Hence, a neoliberalised post-

Apartheid South Africa is not exceptional but rather has brought the univer-

sal into the specific and the specific into the universal. It has been one of

many national laboratories for neoliberalisation, which reproduces the rule

of transnational capital such that it displays a historical specificity not out-

side of, but within a neoliberal global capitalist economy.

The Conjuncture of the Afro-neoliberal State

The remaking of South Africa’s state as an Afro-neoliberal state form since

1996 has fundamentally changed the relationship between the “political” and

the “economic”. The “mode of authority” of the Afro-neoliberal state has

been remade as it has retreated from and has re-regulated various aspects of

state–market relations. In this process, the Afro-neoliberal state has remade

national capitalism into a transnational capitalism. South Africa’s mode of

production is now driven by an externalised logic. The global market mech-

anism has become crucial for organising production, financing and con-

sumption such that even in the state, “commercialisation” and “commodifi-

cation” of public services have become standard. In the South African con-

7 This neoliberal “catch up” argument is different from Bond’s (2004), as he argues

that South African sub-imperialism was the harbinger of neoliberalisation on the

African continent. On the contrary, Africa has been a laboratory for transnational

neoliberalism since 1980. Also see Ferguson (2006), Satgar (2009) and Harrison

(2010). Harrison’s book looks at neoliberalism as a form of social engineering on an

African and global scale.

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text, competitive restructuring has subsumed the state by way of a disem-

bedded and deterritorialised market. The state has become one of many ac-

tors within the market.

The Afro-neoliberal state chose not to go down a path in which a na-

tional popular project could exist driven by statist, capitalist and socialist logics

(Amin 2009). Instead, the transnational fraction of South Africa’s ruling class

(including the ruling ANC-led alliance) constructed a state geared toward

facilitating and managing a transnational capitalist mode of production. This

has solicited praise from the IMF, World Bank, World Trade Organization

(WTO) and World Economic Forum (WEF); most importantly, such praise

has emerged from within the ranks of transnational capital. However, more

than asserting that the post-Apartheid state is Afro-neoliberal, it is necessary

to show how it is constituted. More precisely, what are the practices of such an

Afro-neoliberal state? What are the determining functions of the state that con-

stitute it as an Afro-neoliberal form?

To answer these questions, we need to bring into view how state practice

is structurally implicated in changing the underlying conditions of accumula-

tion, which in turn shape and remake the state form. We need to show how

the post-Apartheid state is locked into the macro-restructuring and manage-

ment of the economy in a manner that eclipses strategic developmental state

interventionism – that is, it is necessary to examine what the main characteris-

tics of the state are as an Afro-neoliberal state and as it has overseen a shift to

a globalised, competitive and export-led growth model with trickle-down

effects. Such a state is not developmental through its embrace of deep inte-

gration into global markets and a logic of global accumulation.

What follows traces how, since 1994 – but mainly with the adoption and

deepening of a neoliberal macro-economic framework in 1996 – the post-

Apartheid state form and its practices are constituted through the restructur-

ing of the Afro-neoliberal accumulation model: the dialectics of integra-

tion/disintegration, external/internal globalisation, and national/transnational

capitalism are highlighted. This conjunctural historicising highlights a state

form that was constituted in post-Apartheid South Africa in the main during

Mandela’s and Mbeki’s governments. While there are strong continuities with

Zuma’s government it is still too early to conclude that this 18-year trajec-

tory will change, despite the Zuma-led government’s “developmental-state”

rhetoric.

The Internationalised Dimensions

To understand the shift to a Afro-neoliberal state, we must look at the “in-

ternationalised dimension”. This relates mainly to key apparatuses, public and

private, within the US-led transnational historical bloc managing the consen-

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Vishwas Satgar

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sus around transnational neoliberalism and its mechanisms of discipline and

control. The Bretton Woods Institutions (the World Bank and the IMF), the

WTO and the WEF developed an important presence in post-Apartheid

South Africa. In turn, South Africa also developed a presence in these institu-

tions. Together, these institutions set parameters for South Africa’s growth

model. For example, in 1993 the IMF intervened in public debate through its

report Economic Policies for A New South Africa in which it argued for a “trickle-

down growth model”, which resonated with various sections of South African

business. At the same time, it provided an 850 million USD Compensatory

and Contingency Financing Facility (CFF) to the Transitional Executive

Council, conditional upon further liberalisation of the economy (Padayachee

1994: 589). The first “democracy budget” of 1994/1995 showed clear signs

that macro-economic stability was not being interpreted based on the RDP,

but rather in line with IMF imperatives, despite the rhetoric from the Govern-

ment of National Unity (Padayachee 1994: 591-594).

At the same time, the World Bank engaged civil society and drew left

intellectuals into various projects. The Bank also became the training ground

for cadres from the liberation movement (Marais 2001: 128). In the WTO

multilateral process, South Africa attained credentials as a firm proponent of

tariff liberalisation and industrial adjustment based on “competitive ad-

vantage”. This was articulated in the GEAR policy, which promoted the

restructuring of the accumulation model toward a competitive economy.

Thus, trade liberalisation meant South Africa was leaving behind an era of

racialised import-substitution industrialisation and instead was choosing a

growth path driven by foreign direct investment (FDI) and competitive

advantage. Consistent with GEAR’s targets for tariff reform, and the

WTO’s liberalisation commitments, South Africa’s average tariff declined

from 6.1 per cent in 1997 to 4.9 per cent in 2004 (Cassim and Zarenda 2004:

106-107). Import duties also declined for consumption of intermediate and

capital goods, further confirming an emphasis on promoting domestic man-

ufacturing through adjustment to global market pressures and ultimately

competitive advantage.

Trade liberalisation triggered a major structural shift in the South Afri-

can economy. Firms, industries and sectors began responding to market

pressures through processes of “right sizing”, “business re-engineering” and

“downsizing” (Buhlungu 2010; Buhlungu and Webster 2006). According to

Nattrass (2003: 141-157), this process has not led to labour absorption as

claimed by the state, but instead has shed jobs as part of increasing labour

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productivity.8 Moreover, while labour-intensive import-substitution indus-

tries have been hardest hit, export industries have also not created jobs, but

have become more capital-intensive in order to remain competitive. Due to

rising imports and penetration by transnational capital in some sectors, local

producers have been displaced in the production of capital goods, consumer

equipment, dairy, pharmaceuticals and clothing (Makgetla 2004: 273-276).

At the same time as many sectors of the economy have been decimated, the

state has continued to trumpet export successes such as the motor industry.

However, as Makgetla (2004: 276) points out, while the motor industry has

had some successes in attracting FDI and increasing exports dramatically

over the past few years, it is still almost wholly owned by foreign transna-

tionals and linked into a global commodity chain. It also has had substantial

tariff incentives through the Motor Industry Development Programme. The

actual effect of the motor industry’s success must be further questioned as

many domestic component manufacturers have been displaced (Carmody

2002: 267). Similarly, foreign clothing firms are leading exports in the cloth-

ing and textile industry and financial market entrants have connected busi-

nesses in South Africa to global financial networks (Gelb and Black 2004:

18-25). Taken together, the state’s actions have not been those of a devel-

opmental state; rather, liberalisation and restructuring have produced an

export-led enclave around which a structurally fragmented and disarticulated

economy has had to adjust.

The South African state has actively participated in these state-centred

global institutions and has argued that it is transforming these institutions

from within (Bond 2001). The Minister of Trade and Industry and the Min-

ister of Finance come across as champions of a new global reform agenda,

which is beneficial to South Africa. However, the empirical reality is that the

“reform from within” strategy has not worked, as South Africa has engaged

through the internalisation of transnational neoliberalism, rather than

through a development strategy grounded in a national consensus. South

Africa is locked into these global relations and has not manoeuvred to se-

cure space for a genuine national development project. For example, South

Africa’s membership in the G20 group of countries, which emerged from

the G7 post-1999, has reinforced its commitment to the controls of the

IMF, WTO, and World Bank. As Soederberg (2004: 81) suggests:

8 South Africa’s unemployment rate has been over 20 per cent since the advent of

demoracy in 1994. In the context of the global economic crisis, this job-shedding

trend has deepened. It is estimated that the secondary effects of the global eco-

nomic crisis, since 2008 have led to the loss of over one million jobs.

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Vishwas Satgar

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Taken together, the constitution of the G20 demonstrates renewed

attempts at core-periphery coercion by inviting these countries into

the highly exclusive G7/G8, or, put more bluntly, by co-opting them

into the rules and standards of the core-alliance coercion by ensuring

official, and thus more tightly integrated relations with the IMF and

World Bank.

In short, South Africa’s “reforms from within” have ensured it a place

within the process of managing a new international financial architecture for

the world. It is one of the many poster nations playing a role in managing a

complex and volatile global financial system in the interests of transnational

capital, especially finance capital. Since the 2008 global economic crisis,

South Africa has been increasingly drawn into global management of this

crisis and has had to ensure its own macro-economic adjustments are in step

with the global consensus it is part of.

The other important aspect of South Africa’s international relations is

the WEF, as it is one of the most important transnational private institutions

in the world and, like other multilateral apparatuses, it organises and ex-

presses the structural power of transnational capital. Since its formation over

30 years ago, the WEF has played a crucial role in ensuring the rise and ar-

ticulation of transnational neoliberalism as a dominant ideology in the global

political economy. The WEF is an agenda-setting institution for transna-

tional capital (as it is comprised of the top 1,000 corporations in the world)

and it is crucial to extending the reach, networks and links between a trans-

national business community and national classes. In a classical Gramscian

sense, we can refer to the WEF as the “modern prince” of global capital.

South Africa has been a consistent participant in the WEF’s Davos

meetings since Nelson Mandela, F.W. de Klerk and Mangosuthu Buthelezi

made a joint appearance in 1992. Subsequently, South Africa has hosted the

WEF’s Africa Forum since 1999. There have been 18 Africa Forum meetings

so far. Zuma, like Mbeki, has ensured that his cabinet members continue to be

diligent hosts of the WEF in Africa. Similar to its Davos Forum, which brings

the top transnational business leaders together with world political leaders, the

Africa Forum targets leading figures on the continent such as business leaders,

political leaders, academics, journalists and other prominent personalities.

These forums are extremely influential as they generate knowledge and serve

as platforms to champion a brand of “structural neoliberalism”. In short, the

WEF’s vision of removing the obstacles to global competitiveness is pursued

through these forums. The vital role it plays in coordinating a particular class

project cannot be underestimated. It is not coincidental that its emphasis on

competitiveness and its problem-solving methodology to unblock obstacles

for markets resonates with Afro-neoliberalism.

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In a similar vein, the South African state has created the President’s

International Investment Council, which brings together representatives of

transnational capital and canvasses support for government reforms and

policies (BuaNews 2008). In this context, South Africa has won praise from

the IMF and World Bank and has also earned a prestigious place in the

WTO as an ardent supporter of trade liberalisation. Similarly, the WEF has

increased its approval ratings of South Africa’s global competitiveness. For

example, using its competitive index (one of its main disciplinary and sur-

veillance tools), the WEF declared that South Africa had moved up in the

global competitiveness rankings from forty-sixth to forty-fourth, which won

the state further praise in the ranks of transnational capital (WEF 2006).

While these approvals help cement the link between transnational and do-

mestic capital, this does not mean that South Africa’s Afro-neoliberal state is a

success in development terms. Instead, it means the state is locked into man-

aging an elite economic consensus rather than discharging a democratic man-

date from its citizens to ensure economic transformation and self-determina-

tion. These institutions, together with other presidential working groups, have

become the main macro-agenda-setting institutions in South Africa. Further, it

is out of this nexus of relations that South Africa has put its weight behind the

African Union’s New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD)

agenda for continental Afro-neoliberal restructuring.

The Primacy of Monetary Policy

The second dimension of South Africa’s Afro-neoliberal state relates to how

it has managed market perceptions through monetary policy and through

inducing financial allocations consistent with the interests of transnational

capital. To understand South Africa’s monetary policy orientation it is nec-

essary to begin with the insulation of the South African Reserve Bank from

undue political pressure. The story begins with the constitutional autonomy

given to the South African Reserve Bank in the new democracy. This has

bolstered its conservative role and shift to neoliberal monetarism, which

privileges capital mobility and low inflation (by controlling the money sup-

ply). Zuma’s finance minister has continued this approach.

Tight monetary policy has not fostered employment creation but has

traded this off by trying to attract capital inflows. This is reflected in ex-

change control liberalisation and inflation targeting. The former has hap-

pened incrementally with capital account liberalisation in 1995, which in-

cluded the removal of the two-tier currency system, the removal of re-

strictions on foreign owners of capital, and deregulation to permit foreign

banks to enter the economy. By 1998 most exchange control regulations on

domestic investors were eliminated. The Reserve Bank’s prioritisation of

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Vishwas Satgar

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managing inflation was reflected in the formalisation of inflation-targeting in

February 2000. Inflation targets are set by the Minister of Finance, and the

Reserve Bank attempts to realise this target through interest-rate adjust-

ments. All of this has helped in terms of good governance surveillance by

credit-rating agencies and has led to improved ratings, affirming South Af-

rica’s consistency in embracing the global consensus around neoliberal eco-

nomic management.

Fiscal policy has also been aligned around tight management so as not

to “crowd out” financial flows, particularly investors. GEAR’s deficit-re-

duction targets have ensured a decline in deficit spending and since 1999

this has been kept below 3 per cent of GDP (Gelb 2005: 374). Comple-

menting this effort to bring in investment is the creation of numerous in-

vestment-promotion agencies and initiatives in national, provincial and local

government, all declaring that “South Africa is open for business”. Gelb and

Black (2004: 8) suggest there are more than 35 incentive schemes for inves-

tors and commitments to treat all investors the same in South Africa re-

garding foreign exchange for import, export and access (based on commit-

ments made by South Africa under the WTO Agreement on Trade-Related

Investment Measures – TRIMS), and that there are over 30 bilateral invest-

ment treaties, most with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and

Development (OECD) countries. In addition, South Africa’s Afro-neolib-

eral state has actively promoted “development corridors” and “industrial

development zones” as a basis to attract FDI flows. In this regard, the

lengths gone to provide “sweeteners” to FDI are rather telling. Hallowes

(2011: 231-234) reveals the hefty energy and tax subsidy advanced to win the

deal with Rio Tinto Alcan and secure their commitment to the Coega In-

dustrial Development Zone. To sweeten the deal, the government had al-

ready spent 20 billion ZAR on Coega, which included 6.4 billion ZAR in

high-voltage transmission infrastructure to supply power to the smelter and

provided a 1.93 billion ZAR tax incentive. Hallowes points out this deal

would have created only 1,000 jobs at a cost of 5 million ZAR each, with at

least 300 being available only to highly skilled professionals. After a decade,

Alcan pulled out of the deal, claiming the government could not guarantee

the power supply. The attempt to attract Rio Tinto Alcan into the Coega

Industrial Development Zone is symptomatic of the state’s desire to repro-

duce the “competitive advantage” of cheap electricity that underpins South

Africa’s minerals–energy complex, and in the process the state is decrying

South African commitments to address climate change, including the

broader macro-challenge of eco-centric production and an ecological transi-

tion of the economy.

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Ultimately, the Afro-neoliberal approach to macro-economic manage-

ment has been dismal in terms of attracting FDI in comparative terms and

as a share of global flows (Gelb and Black 2004: 9-10; Mohammed 2010).

However, this does not detract from the fact that South Africa has had vari-

ous global corporations already within its economy, even prior to the demo-

cratic transition. Despite sanctions and disinvestment, at the time of the

unbanning of political movements there were more than 450 firms within

South Africa – 85 per cent from Europe and 13 per cent from North

America – with FDI liabilities at 8 billion USD (Gelb and Black 2004: 8).

This points further to South Africa being caught in globalising tides, from

the outside coming in, as part of a process of transnational neoliberal re-

structuring emanating from capitalist centres of the 1970s. The Afro-neolib-

eral loosening and opening up from within gave further impetus to the

transnationalisation of South Africa’s economy.

Dismantling Self-Sufficiency in Strategic Sectors

The third dimension of South Africa’s Afro-neoliberal state relates to the

dismantling of self-sufficiency and further configuring state responses based

on competitive advantage. The first aspect of this relates to the restructuring

of state assets. The Apartheid regime built up a racialised import-substitu-

tion-industrialisation-accumulation model, supported by the export of min-

erals, but with a strong parastatal sector to buttress it. This form of state

intervention affected the underlying cost structure of the South African

economy, in terms of energy, transport, communications, fuel and other

inputs for production. With the ANC’s RDP envisaging massive public

sector investment and the further development of the internal market as a

platform from which to develop an external orientation, the role of recon-

figuring South Africa’s parastatals to support an endogenous-driven growth

and development strategy was seen as crucial. In other words, such a para-

statal sector was crucial in finding the right balance between import-substi-

tution and export-led accumulation. The restructuring of state assets in post-

Apartheid South Africa through the Afro-neoliberal agenda was not guided

by this imperative. Instead it was informed by the imperative of raising fiscal

resources by selling of state assets (Fine 1995).

In this process it is estimated that at least 18 non-core assets have been

sold off, including Sun Air, Transnet’s Production House, Chemical Ser-

vices, and Transmed Administrator (Cassim 2006: 73). However, this pro-

cess is now left with core parastatal enterprises: Eskom, South African Air-

ways, Telkom, Transnet and Denel. Various Black Economic Empower-

ment (BEE) deals, through strategic equity partners, are changing the own-

ership patterns of these core parastatals and their assets. Increasingly, these

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Vishwas Satgar

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enterprises are operating as quasi-private enterprises rather than state insti-

tutions guided by national development objectives. Moreover, the commer-

cialising and competitive logic of restructuring has not seen a cut in costs

from ESKOM, the main electricity provider. Instead, electricity price in-

creases are firmly on the agenda. In the case of ESKOM as it is cut loose

from sourcing capital expenditure from the national fiscus it has to pass on

the costs of capital financing to its consumers. In short, South Africa’s para-

statals are not operating in accordance with national priorities and a coordi-

nated development strategy.

A similar trend has emerged in agriculture. Historically, South Africa

developed a highly commercialised and mechanised, though racialised and

fossil-fuel-driven, agricultural system. This agro-food economy was central

in ensuring food security. Through “big bang” Afro-neoliberal restructuring,

agriculture has been deregulated through the removal of all state-run mar-

keting boards; farm subsidies have been cut; agriculture cooperatives have

been forced into a process of conversion into equity-based companies; and

land reform has been anchored within a “willing seller, willing buyer” model.

The state justified these moves by arguing that regulation both raised the

price of food and undermined efficiency (Makgetla 2004: 273). In fact, the

opposite has been witnessed, with ownership patterns concentrating in the

context of liberalised agriculture and with food prices constantly increasing.

In the case of bread, a staple for most working-class South Africans, four

major milling and bread-producing companies have consistently colluded to

push up the price of bread (Cock 2006). In 2008 South Africa was a net

importer of farm products like wheat and more recently even maize, as

commodity speculation has had its impacts.

In general terms, the withdrawal and reinvention of state–market rela-

tions have permitted the state to promote prestige and mega-development

projects while trying to ameliorate the deepening inequalities and precari-

ousness gripping South African society. A mix of “games and crumbs” has

come to the fore as the basis of state intervention. On the one side, the

World Cup (estimated 30 billion ZAR), the high-speed Gautrain (estimated

30 billion ZAR) and South Africa’s arms deal (estimated 70 billion ZAR)

have all cost the South African taxpayer excessive amounts of money while

being presented as crucial drivers of growth and job creation.9 Despite the

9 It is estimated that the costs of the World Cup have generally been underestimated.

Cornellisen (2010) shows that official projected expenditure on stadiums and infra-

structure upgrades alone stood at 33 billion ZAR and projected income at 19 billion

ZAR in 2008. Moreover, in the public discourse it has been suggested that South

Africa allowed FIFA to take a larger share than any other host country ever had of

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Beyond Marikana: The Post-Apartheid South African State

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official rhetoric and expenditure, South Africa’s growth rates were in a neg-

ative range by 2009, with modest improvements and reaching approximately

2 per cent in 2012. In general terms, and given South Africa’s link with the

global economy, a period of stagnation is more the appropriate scenario.

The room for counter-cyclical fiscal policy has been exhausted (unless the

state wants to increase its debt-to-GDP ratio and its sovereign debt like

Greece); FDI inflows have been dismal; there is growing tax fatigue

amongst citizens; and domestic capital is not investing. Moreover, official

unemployment has remained at approximately 25 per cent, with one million

jobs having been lost with the onset of the global crisis in 2008/2009

(Makgetla 2010).

On the other side, the state has brought close to 14 million people onto

the social grant system, provided indigent support for poor households at

the municipal level, and built a million houses to address housing backlogs.

In terms of the social grant system (child and elderly grants), this is a crucial

buffer for households at the epicentre of the crisis of social reproduction;

however, currently between 8 and 10 million people are not receiving any

grants, wages or remittances in South Africa (Terreblanche 2012: 101). Indi-

gent-support policies in municipal governments, like that of Johannesburg,

are a response to grass-roots struggles; as Prishani Naidoo (2010: 186)

points out, in practice “[these policies] move away from creating universal

forms of access to decommodified services towards more targeted interven-

tions that provide such access incrementally according to an individual’s

ability to pay” and that “while [such policies are] portrayed as ‘pro-poor’,

[they] actually work towards moulding the behaviours of that population

group in ways that further entrench inequality and differentiated standards

of living”. While the state trumpets its building of over a million houses

since 1994, the failure to provide jobs where people live has led to an in-

crease in migration to urban areas. Housing demand and backlogs in this

urban context have ballooned recently, with the state far from delivering

what is really required. Currently, it is estimated the state needs to build

another 2.1 million houses to address the needs of 12 million South Afri-

cans, a quarter of the population.

Underpinning this reality is a state incapable of stemming the tide to-

wards deepening inequality. According to Terreblanche (2012) this is a trend

consisent with comparative international experience of neoliberal forms of

state rule; in South Africa, given inherited legacies, income inequality has

become grotesque. He points out that

income from the World Cup for spectator fees, food, media contracts and para-

phernalia.

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Vishwas Satgar

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over the past 18 years the Gini coefficient increased from 0.66 to 0.70.

The richest 10 million South Africans received almost 75 per cent of

total income in 2008, while the poorest 25 million received less than

8 per cent (Terreblance 2012: 110).

In short, despite the ameliorative social protection provided by the state, this

is premised on the deepening of poverty, unemployment and inequality. The

state essentially prevails over an unviable society as it has remade strategic

state intervention into pro-market efficiency practice.

Fostering a Culture of Capitalist Accumulation on the

Terms of Transnational Capital

The final dimension and crucial legitimating practice of South Africa’s Afro-

neoliberal state relates to promoting a culture of capitalist accumulation on

the terms of transnational capital. Former President Thabo Mbeki’s charac-

terisation of South Africa as being composed of “two economies” helped to

engender this culture of accumulation. The “first economy” is relatively well

developed and competitive, while the “second economy” is backward, un-

derdeveloped and survivalist. The crucial challenge in the “two-economies

discourse” is to deracialise the first economy while also creating a pathway

or ladder from the second economy into the first economy. This discourse

of two economies did not question South Africa’s historically monopolised

mode of production, but instead focused on the need to deracialise and

broaden the first economy or transnationalised mode of production. All

South Africans were meant to aspire to be part of transnational capitalism.

The state effectively became a crucial enabler in this process.

Since 1996 government intervention has been informed by this char-

acterisation of the economy in various ways (Hirsh 2005: 193-256). First, the

state has promoted small and medium enterprises as a way to unleash latent

entrepreneurs into the first economy. In March 1995 the President’s Con-

ference on Small Business led to a white paper, a new small business law,

and five new major institutions: the Centre for Small Business Promotion

(policy unit in the Department of Trade and Industry – DTI), the Centre for

Small Business Promotion (a policy unit in the DTI), the Ntsika Enterprise

Promotion Agency (to provide non-financial assistance to small entrepre-

neurs), Khula Enterprise Finance Ltd. (to provide loan funds and loan guar-

antees) and the National Small Business Council. Alternative forms of en-

terprises such as cooperatives have been collapsed into this framework and

are seen as stepping stones to becoming just another business form in the

transnationalised “first economy” (Satgar and Williams 2011).

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Beyond Marikana: The Post-Apartheid South African State

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Second, the state recognised that the first economy needed to be linked

to the second economy through micro-reform interventions. The state’s an-

swer to this was the Accelerated Shared Growth Initiative for South Africa

(ASGISA), which aims to achieve an annual average growth rate of 6 per cent

between 2010 and 2014.10 The crux of ASGISA is to bring down the “costs of

doing business in South Africa” by highlighting conditions for the first econ-

omy to be globally competitive particularly through state-led infrastructure

spending.11 In addition, the New Industrial Policy Framework adds the need

for various measures such as public works, small and medium enterprises,

procurement policy, and so on, to provide a ladder from the first to the se-

cond economy for the poor, excluded and marginalised. Under the Zuma

government, this direction of industrial policy has not changed.

Finally, the culture of accumulation is linked to attempts to deracialise

monopoly capitalism through BEE (Rumney 2005). BEE gained impetus

starting in the early 1990s as major South African conglomerates began

unbundling and deconcentrating the ownership structure of the South Afri-

can economy. The BEE process has gone through various phases: In the

mid-1990s the private sector attempted to cut debt-financed ownership

deals. By 1998, with over 230 such deals on the JSE valued in aggregate at

37 billion ZAR, the stock market crashed, bringing most BEE ventures

down with it. A second phase, spearheaded by black business associations

and the government, began in 1999. This initiative led to the establishment

of a non-statutory Black Economic Commission and a strategy. A third

phase established BEE charters – the first was put in place in the liquid fuels

industry – and the subsequent promulgation of the Broad-Based Black Eco-

nomic Empowerment Act (2004).

This policy and process of BEE envisages various forms of empower-

ment including: direct ownership and control of enterprises and assets, dera-

cialising management at senior levels, human resource development and

employment equity, and indirect empowerment through procurement. By all

accounts this process is not happening smoothly, with uneven deracialisa-

tion across sectors and in a context in which historically white monopoly

capital has been moving offshore since the early 1990s (Carmody 2002: 262;

10 Contained in Background Document – A Catalyst for Accelerated and Shared Growth-South

Africa (ASGISA), media briefing by Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka,

6 February 2006.

11 In his 2012 State of the Nation address, President Zuma announced a 300 billion

ZAR capital expenditure plan led by Transnet, South Africa’s commercial rail para-

statal, to build transport infrastructure to bring down costs of doing business, online:

<www.info.gov.za/speech/DynamicAction?pageid=461&sid=24980&tid=55960>

(21 February 2012).



Vishwas Satgar



Daniel et al. 2003). Despite its challenges, the state has used these various

mechanisms to develop a culture of accumulation which has also served to

undermine the state. The rampant corruption engendered through BEE has

led to the capture of the state bureaucracy in many instances by parasitic

interests.

Corruption in the South African state has become endemic and reaches

into the highest echelons (Sole 2005 and Southall 2007). In many ways, BEE

has provided a licence to loot state resources, with officials in government

tied in with politicians and aspirant elites outside the state. In the province

of Kwazulu-Natal alone, one billion ZAR has been lost to corruption. Most

government departments have achieved qualified audits in terms of the

Public Finance Management Act and according to the Auditor-General.

This further confirms the abuse and misuse of fiscal resources. Over the

past few years, South Africa’s media outlets have blown the whistle on the

“looting of the Land Bank”; an arms deal involving South Africa’s sitting

president, Jacob Zuma; “oil-gate”, which involved ANC front companies

and the illegal purchase of oil from Saddam Hussein’s Iraq; “travel-gate”,

which involved ANC parliamentarians and travel agencies, as well as some

of the most high-profile BEE-related corruption scandals. Several national

cabinet ministers, provincial ministers and municipal councils have also been

fingered in BEE-related corruption. The recent World Cup has also not

escaped this dominant trend. Corruption has been exposed related to sta-

dium-building and ostensibly linked to the murder of eight politicians in the

province of Mpumalanga. In most instances, criminal prosecution has been

avoided and the Department of Finance has not blacklisted any BEE com-

panies on its register for corruption. Instead of an overarching national

vision and a clear directing role for the state, BEE accumulation is not about

structural transformation but rather about facilitating parasitic class for-

mation. More specifically, BEE policy is a crucial part of a trade-off with

white monopoly capital to facilitate the globalisaton of South Africa from

within.

Conclusion

Post-Apartheid South Africa resolved its globalisation dilemma by embrac-

ing the restructuring of global capitalism. This choice engendered an Afro-

neoliberal state from above that undermines state capacity for strategic in-

tervention and an endogenous accumulation path driven by various logics

and a practice of embedded autonomy. Instead, the Afro-neoliberal state

locks South Africa into economic management practices to ensure that the

country is integrated into global financial, production and trade structures



Beyond Marikana: The Post-Apartheid South African State



on the terms of transnational capital, including a transnational fraction of

South African capital championing BEE. It constrains and closes off areas

of autonomous economic policymaking.

In concrete terms, the South African economy has been structurally

transformed into an extroverted and enclave-based accumulation model.

Afro-neoliberal state practices have been the cause and effect of this. These

features of the post-Apartheid political economy confirm the end of South

African exceptionalism and reduce South Africa to being just another of

many neoliberal experiments on the African continent and in the global

political economy. Despite the rhetoric and declarations about being a de-

velopmental state, South Africa does not have such a state, even given the

rise to power of Jacob Zuma – the “champion of the working class”, ac-

cording to the ANC left. Instead, national liberation and post-Apartheid

development is about reproducing the rule of transnational capital, free

markets and possessive individualism. The Marikana massacre affirms this

reality and the willingness of ruling elites to go beyond market mechanisms

to the point that state violence is utilised to maintain and manage a deeply

globalised economy. This does not bode well for the future of South African

democracy.

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Jenseits von Marikana: Der Post-Apartheid-Staat in Südafrika

Zusammenfassung: Dieser Beitrag setzt das Marikana-Massaker, bei dem

34 Bergarbeiter von der Polizei erschossen wurden, in Bezug zum derzeiti-

gen Zustand des südafrikanischen Staates. Gleichzeitig wird die Charakteri-

sierung des Post-Apartheid-Staates als „Entwicklungsstaat“ infrage gestellt.

Der Autor beleuchtet zunächst, was diese Charakterisierung impliziert und

inwieweit diese Fehlinterpretation ideologisch begründet ist. Er plädiert

dann für einen Ansatz, der den Zustand des Post-Apartheid-Staates im Kon-

text des wachsenden Einflusses des Neoliberalismus sowie der „Indigenisie-

rung“ des Neoliberalismus auf dem afrikanischen Kontinent erklärt. Schließ-

lich analysiert er die aktuellen wirtschaftspolitischen Entscheidungen, die

den südafrikanischen Staat zu einem „afro-neoliberalen“ Staat machen, und

zeigt die Konvergenz zwischen diesen Entscheidungen und einem idealtypi-

schen Staat im Rahmen von globaler neoliberaler Umstrukturierung und

Krisenmanagement. Der Autor kommt zu dem Schluss, dass die tiefe Ein-

bindung Südafrikas in die Globalisierung eine Form staatlichen Handelns

bedingt, die über die Ausschöpfung von Marktmechanismen hinaus auch die

Gewaltanwendung zur Sicherung der eigenen Existenz einschließt. Die Vor-

gänge in Marikana sind dafür ein Beleg.

Schlagwörter: Südafrika, Globalisierung, Staat, Neoliberalismus, Marikana-

Massaker

TRANSFERRABLE CAPACITY DEVELOPMENT LESSONS IN SUPPORT OF MUNICIPAL TRANSPORT SERVICE DELIVERY: CASE STUDY OF BOJANALA PLATINUM DISTRICT MUNICIPALITY

Conference Paper

Full-text available

Sep 2024

Bojanala Platinum District Municipality, in the North West Province is endowed with the extractive economy characterised with the mobile community, labour influx, unemployment and underdeveloped road infrastructure. The District facilitates service delivery through among others, the Integrated Public Transport Network and the District Integrated Transport Plan. The problems of inadequate budget impact on the performance, acquisition and retention of skilled employees for strategic and operational transport policies and infrastructure development. The purpose of this study was to examine challenges related to the use of capacity development of structures and policies in relation to service delivery, and explore how to overcome them in the improvement of rural transportation. The study examines structures and policies at the intersection of the theoretical perspectives of skills development, performance improvement and collaborative participation. The research approach is a qualitative naturalistic enquiry and also employs questionnaires for confirmatory purpose and documentary analysis. The study concludes that there is lack of administrative-political synergy, inadequate socioeconomic resilience, and limited dissemination of knowledge. Against these conclusions the study recommends formation of responsive and efficient structures, creation and implementation of knowledge sharing strategies, and introduction of a transformative policy instrument to empower senior management.

Perspectives on Eco-cide

Chapter

Full-text available

Jun 2024

Vishwas Satgar

Social Enterprises in Postcolonial Economies: Articulating Neoliberalism in Practice for a Public Economic Geography

Article

Apr 2024

Vrinda Chopra

Legalism in the Marikana Commission of Inquiry Report: Veiling “Sociological Causes” of the Massacre

Article

Full-text available

Jul 2023

Claire-Anne Louise Lester

Analysis and Book Findings

Chapter

Jan 2025

Juliet Eileen Joseph

This chapter synthesizes the book’s central discussions and key findings, particularly aimed at enhancing gender mainstreaming within municipal governments in South Africa. Despite the long-standing concept of gender mainstreaming, its implementation has been less scrutinized at municipal levels compared to other governmental sectors. Most existing literature largely centers on women’s representation rather than their active participation, influence, and decision-making power. This book endeavors to fill this gap by analyzing the representation and impact of women in local government decision-making, particularly since the 1994 elections which saw significant political access gained by women. The necessity of transforming municipal institutions to better accommodate gender mainstreaming is emphasized, underpinned by South Africa’s legislative framework, including the Employment Equity Act of 1998. Persistent gender inequities—women’s underrepresentation in formal employment and managerial positions, unequal pay, and barriers to career advancement within municipal structures—are underscored. Specific case studies of the CoCT and Mangaung Metropolitan Municipality reveal the nuances of gender representation and the systemic challenges faced. Data analysis from these municipalities shows a higher representation of women in PR election systems versus ward systems. Yet, entrenched institutional cultures and structural deficiencies continue to marginalize women. It concludes that the South African government has taken significant steps toward gender equality, including legislation and policy frameworks; however, these have yet to fully translate into equitable representation and empowerment at the municipal level. Ongoing policy review, enhanced coordination roles for national gender mechanisms, and greater political will to achieve gender mainstreaming and equal participation in municipal governance are emphasized.

Anti-apartheid, Anti-capitalism, and Anti-imperialism: Liberation in South Africa

Chapter

Feb 2021

Andrew Higginbottom

Anti-apartheid, Anti-capitalism, and Anti-imperialism: Liberation in South Africa

Chapter

Oct 2019

Andy Higginbottom

History

Chapter

Jan 2016

Transformation Deferred: Disparate Development in Post-Apartheid South Africa (1994-2004)

Article

Full-text available

Feb 2024

Vivek N.D.

The role of the state in promoting development and economic transformation in South Africa has been the subject of diverse viewpoints and discussions. With the transition to democracy in 1994, progress on various socio-economic indicators has been achieved due to the macro-level programs instituted by the African National Congress (ANC) led government. The current economic situation in South Africa, influenced by globalization, involves various powerful entities such as global and national capital, the apartheid elite (mostly white), and the emerging black elite connected to the ANC. These dynamics have an intricate impact on the working class, reshaping power structures in the country. This article delves into the developmental impact of key socio-economic programs of the ANC, notably the Reconstruction and Development Program and the Growth, Employment, and Redistribution Plan. It explicitly examines access to basic services like housing, electricity, water, and sanitation, shedding light on their impact. The focus also extends to the persistent issues of unemployment and resulting income inequalities within South Africa. These programs' effects on these societal challenges are thoroughly analyzed. Ultimately, the article highlights the starkly unequal developmental outcomes, showcasing how significant portions of South African society remain excluded despite these initiatives.

Politics and Government in South Africa

Book

Apr 2023

Mueni Wa Muiu

8 Can South Africa be a developmental state?

Chapter

Jul 2011

Ben Fine

MITI and the Japanese Miracle: The Growth of Industrial Policy, 1925-1975

Book

Jun 1982

Chalmers Johnson

Neoliberal Africa: The Impact Of Global Social Engineering

Book

Jan 2010

Graham Harrison

Gramsci, hegemony and international relations: an essay in method

Chapter

Feb 1993

Robert W. Cox

The essays collected here relate the writings of Antonio Gramsci and others to the contemporary reconstruction of historical materialist theories of international relations. The contributors analyse the contradiction between globalising and territorially-based social and political forces in the context of past, present and future world orders, and view the emerging world order as undergoing a structural transformation, a 'triple crisis' involving economic, political and 'socio-cultural' change. The prevailing trend of the 1980s and early 1990s toward the marketisation and commodification of social relations leads the contributors to argue that socialism needs to be redefined away from the totalising visions associated with Marxism-Leninism, towards the idea of the self-defence of society and social choice to counter the disintegrating and atomising effects of globalising and unplanned market forces.

Chapter Eight. The French Developmental State as Myth and Moral Ambition

Chapter

Dec 2019

Michael Loriaux

Chapter One. Introduction: Chalmers Johnson and the Politics of Nationalism and Development

Chapter

Dec 2019

Meredith Woo-Cumings

Embedded Autonomy: States and Industrial Transformation

Book

Dec 1995

Peter Evans

South Africans have Arrived: Post-Apartheid Corporate Expansion into Africa

Article

Jan 2003

Globalization, Negotiation, and the Failure of Transformation in South Africa: Revolution at a Bargain?

Book

Jul 2006

Michael H. Allen

The book explains the social forces, forms of consciousness and structural constraints that undermined Apartheid, preserved national unity and yet, later constrained democratic sovereignty, as the imperatives of global markets clashed with the prior aspirations of the democratic revolution.

Globalization in a Middle-income Economy: FDI, Production, and the Labor Market in South Africa

Chapter

Jan 2004

This chapter examines the impact of foreign direct investment during the 1990s on South Africa, a middle-income semi-industrialized economy with an established industrial base, a segmented labor market with very high unemployment, and real exchange rate depreciation during the 1990s. The paper argues on the basis of survey data and sectoral analysis that FDI has had some impact on the globalizing of production, in the sense of output being exported into global production networks. But most new FDI in South Africa has not been part of the latter processes, focusing rather on domestic and regional markets. Integration of domestic production processes into global networks remains limited. Furthermore, overall FDI levels have been low, so that policy objectives of increased output and employment from FDI have not been met. In particular, the contribution of FDI to savings, investment and thus employment-creating growth has been low, a matter of concern given unemployment rates in excess of 40 percent. On the other hand, FDI has contributed to skills upgrading, particularly among high-skilled blacks, which is important given the importance of ‘black economic empow-erment’ in the current South African context. But in doing so, it may have also worsened the skills bias in the labor market.

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