State Capture in South Africa: Class formation, Primitive Accumulation, and Nation-State
Résumé
This paper develops a theoretical analysis of State Capture in South Africa by interpreting it as a historically specific process of primitive accumulation mediated through the State. Section 2 establishes the conceptual framework by revisiting the dual nature of the modern State as simultaneously a Class-State and a Nation-State, emphasising the structural tensions inherent in capitalist societies. Section 3 applies this framework to the apartheid period, analysing the racially stratified class structure and showing how apartheid functioned as a regime of State-led primitive accumulation aimed at fostering an Afrikaner capitalist class. Section 4 examines the post-apartheid transition, highlighting the persistence of a disjunction between political power and economic power and the constraints imposed by the adoption of neoliberal macroeconomic policies. Section 5 focuses on the failed and uneven emergence of a broad-based black capitalist class after 1994, arguing that policies such as Black Economic Empowerment could not substitute for a coherent developmental strategy. Section 6 conceptualises State Capture as a mass process of primitive accumulation through the State, moving beyond individualised notions of corruption. Section 7 discusses the ambiguous macroeconomic effects of large-scale corruption and the difficulties of empirical assessment. Section 8 concludes by showing that State Capture undermines both national cohesion and the State's capacity to reproduce class relations, rendering the system structurally unstable.
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