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Post-Apartheid South Africa: A Neoliberal Disaster Made and in the Making

Mohamed, Seeraj; Fine, Ben

Authors

Seeraj Mohamed



Contributors

Rémy Herrera
Editor

Abstract

In absolute terms, and relative to both hopes and potential, post-apartheid economic and social reproduction has been a disaster. A key element in explaining this is to situate it within an extraordinarily rapid and full adjustment, albeit with peculiar South African features in light of the heritage of apartheid, to neoliberal imperatives, properly understood. These do not involve the withdrawal of the State, as suggested by neoliberal ideology, but do include extensive State intervention to bring about globalization of production (and commodity relations more generally) and, in particular, the financialization of the economy. In a South African context, this has been associated with the unbundling of its (Mineral–Energy Complex) conglomerates, their integration with global capital, extensive expansion of the financial sector (together with capital flight, much of it illegal), the formation of new black elites, and State capture and centralized control for these purposes at the cost of economic and social functioning for the vast majority of those sections of the population already extremely disadvantaged under the apartheid system. The result more broadly has been to deliver what we term the five lows (of investment, productivity, wages, employment and provision of social and economic infrastructure). These evolving conditions, across their various aspects, and their association with the unravelling of effective progressive opposition for alternatives, are documented.

Citation

Mohamed, S., & Fine, B. (2025). Post-Apartheid South Africa: A Neoliberal Disaster Made and in the Making. In R. Herrera (Ed.), Trajectories of Declining and Destructive Capitalism: (141 167). Emerald. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0161-723020250000040010

Online Publication Date May 1, 2025
Publication Date May 1, 2025
Deposit Date May 21, 2025
Publisher Emerald
Pages 141 167
Series Title Research in Political Economy
Series Number 40
Series ISSN 0161-7230
Book Title Trajectories of Declining and Destructive Capitalism:
ISBN 9781835492031
DOI https://doi.org/10.1108/S0161-723020250000040010