Overview

South Africa’s political economy is commonly understood as a Minerals-Energy (and Financial) Complex, ME(F)C. But the MEC has been misunderstood. Specifying the MEFC as a system of accumulation and drawing upon extensive research and engaging in critical debates, the originator of the term, traces the MEFC from apartheid origins, through the ANC’s failure to adopt coherent and coordinated policies, ultimately leading to degeneration into state capture and beyond. Emphasis is placed upon the interaction between South African specificities and globalisation, neoliberalisation and financialisation, anchoring economic and social reproduction in “five lows” across investment, productivity, wages, employment and social provision.

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Ben Fine, Ph.D. (1974), London School of Economics, is Emeritus Professor of Economics at SOAS University of London and Visiting Professor at Wits School of Governance, University of Witwatersrand, South Africa. His most recent books include Material Cultures of Financialisation, co-edited with Kate Bayliss and Mary Robertson (Routledge, 2018); Race, Class and the Post-Apartheid Democratic State, co-edited with John Reynolds and Robert van Niekerk (University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, 2019); and A Guide to the Systems of Provision Approach: Who Gets What, How and Why, with Kate Bayliss (Palgrave, 2021). His Marx’s ‘Capital’ (Pluto, 2016) is now in its sixth edition (with co-author Alfredo Saad-Filho). He was founding Chair of the International Initiative for Promoting Political Economy (iippe.org) until June 2023.

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