South African Capitalism Research Articles

A Comparative Analysis of the Treatment of Inflation in South African Capital Gains Tax and the Accrual Systems

Inflation is often defined as a continuous and considerable rise in prices in general. Recently it has become a focal point due to globally elevated levels of inflation. Considering its treatment in the South African legal system, this article unpacks the contrary approaches of the Matrimonial Property Act 88 of 1984 (MPA) and the Income Tax Act 58 of 1962 (ITA) regarding inflation. These two Acts are considered as they provide different approaches to inflation, therefore different outcomes. While the MPA makes provision for inflation in determining the growth of each of the estates of spouses married out of community with the accrual system, the ITA does not recognise inflation insofar as it relates to capital gains tax. Comparing the approaches of the MPA and the ITA reveals disparities in the law and justifies the investigation conducted in this article. Accordingly, this article compares the effect of inflation and capital gains tax and why inflation is not considered when determining the base cost of an asset for capital gains tax purposes. To explain the inconsistency between the MPA and the ITA, this article firstly unpacks the characteristics of the South African matrimonial property regime insofar as it relates to inflation. Thereafter, the article characterises the South African application of the capital gains tax and articulates the shortcomings of existing capital gains tax provisions and the resulting challenges in the application of both Acts. In comparing the ways in which the MPA and the ITA deal with inflation, a clear distinction becomes evident. This article finds that, while the initial inclusion rate for capital gains tax inflation is largely accommodated, subsequent increases in the inclusion rate have erased this provision. Given these findings, this article suggests that the current South African capital gains tax regime's inclusion rate be further investigated to determine whether a wider set of exclusions could be developed to better accommodate inflation.

‘Nothing has changed, South Africa’s sub-imperialist role has been reinforced’: Samir Amin’s durable critique of apartheid/post-apartheid political economy

ABSTRACT Samir Amin’s critiques of both apartheid-era and post-apartheid political economy contributed to his scathing view of the crucial ‘semi-peripheral’ layer of the world system, a perspective typically ignored in binary formulations of Global North and Global South. Amin’s 1977 article ‘The future of South Africa’ was among his first statements of how, using that era’s dependency theory language, ‘South African capital requires an outward policy of expansionism, so that ultimately, internal colonialism becomes coterminous with sub-imperialism’. Amin also labeled post-apartheid South Africa sub-imperialist because of the domination of ‘monopoly capital’ in the extractive-industry circuits (depleting what Marx called ‘free gifts of nature’) and the below-survival-level wages that have long shaped the economic structure. Two other coterminous factors were Pretoria’s imposition of continent-wide neoliberalism through the New Partnership for Africa’s Development and the Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa BRICS network – both of which proved incapable of transcending neoliberal economic policies insisted upon by contemporary imperialism. Following the BRICS 2023 Sandton summit’s elite failure to advance de-dollarisation or other ‘delinking’ strategies, Amin would nod, knowingly, when hearing the term ‘sub-imperial’ to describe the bloc – and look for inspiration instead to successes of grassroots campaigners.

The making of Trotskyist tradition in South Africa: A reading of 'The Spark', 1935–1937

ABSTRACT: The purpose of this contribution, towards understanding the contribution of the early years of Trotskyism in South Africa, is to distil the major analytic themes that developed in the political organ of the Workers Party of South Africa, The Spark . It looks critically at the first three years of The Spark to establish how the WPSA was positioning itself relative to the unfolding class struggle in South Africa. In asking what theoretical and conceptual starting points around the questions of race and class emerge out of this corpus of writing it seeks to show that the early Trotskyists were, in their vocabularies and theoretical frames, little different to their political opponents in the Communist Party of South Africa. Through The Spark they showed, however, that there was in the question of race something distinct about South African capitalism. They began but did not complete this explanation in their attempts to explain how segregation worked.

Globalisation, Western-style malls and consumerism in the Accra-Tema city-region, Ghana

Over the last two decades, a number of Western-style malls have been built in various sub-Saharan African cities. Accra-Tema city-region (ATCR) currently has six such malls that have been built mostly with South African capital. Malls are a creation of the global core and their emergence is associated with cultural changes that manifest in consumerism, the formation of a middle class, advertising and the growth of local manufacturing. We ask whether the malls in ATCR are following the formation trajectory of malls in the global core. Using a methodology involving surveys and interviews of mall users and managers respectively, we answer this question by mapping the geography and history of ATCR’s malls. Superficially, ATCR’s malls are following the formation trajectory of malls in the global core but there are major differences due to globalisation. Superfluously, the expansion of semi-peripheral (South African) capital into Ghana and the importation of goods from outside Ghana means ATCR’s malls are different from those of the global core. Our findings have implications for the sustainability of malls in sub-Saharan Africa under globalisation.This article was published open access under a CC BY licence: https://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0.

IN THIS ISSUE

In the first of two Research Articles, diaspora in a sub-regional context is the focus of the micro-study by Saint José Inaka. His analysis of the political clashes between militant and non-militant oriented. Congolese factions in Pretoria draws attention to a hitherto largely unknown phenomenon. The fights between grassroots activists relating to differences in political support in the Democratic Republic of the Congo have since the 2000s expanded into the local arena of the South African capital. Until then mainly a domain of middle classes and elites operating transnationally, the dividing line is less between those for or against the Kabila government than those for or against the use of violence. According to Inaka, Pretoria's leniency towards the militant combattants allows them to limit the activities of those preferring peaceful means in support of change at home. Interestingly, the author submits that being exposed to the South African democracy has the impact of setting an example and reference point for how Congolese would like to be governed in their home country.

África do Sul e o seu entorno regional

O objetivo deste texto é analisar as relações da África do Sul com seu entorno regional desdeo fim do apartheid, problematizando a noção de que os governos do Congresso NacionalAfricano (ANC) praticam uma política subimperialista. A análise se apoia em documentose entrevistas realizadas na África do Sul, Zimbabwe e Zâmbia. Inicialmente, é apresentadauma visão geral das relações da África do Sul com seus vizinhos, evidenciando a assimetriaque as caracteriza. A seguir, é discutida a tentativa malograda do presidente Thabo Mbekide liderar um renascimento africano sob a égide da Nepad, e seus desdobramentos.A terceira seção enfoca a África Austral, examinando as consequências da expansão mercantilsul-africana em Zimbábue e Zâmbia. Na sequência, discuto, a partir de entrevistas, se essaexpansão corresponde a uma estratégia determinada dos governos da ANC. Nas reflexõesfinais, avanço a hipótese de que, embora constate-se uma assimetria nas relações da Áfricado Sul com seus vizinhos, as debilidades e contradições do Estado e do próprio capitalismosul-africano limitam sua possibilidade de atuação. Como resultado, a expansão regional denegócios sul-africanos se dá à despeito de qualquer estratégia estatal, o que enseja repensara caracterização desse fenômeno como um subimperialismo.

Gendered Labour, Migratory Labour: Reforming Sugar Regimes in Xinavane, Mozambique

Sugar has played a contentious historical role in the development of Mozambique. Following the country’s 16-year civil conflict, the industry has re-emerged as an important sector for investment and national rebuilding. This article explores how the industry’s narratives of technical efficiency and success in increasing production mask dynamics of agricultural labour in the country’s largest sugar estate at Xinavane, southern Mozambique. Based on archival and ethnographic investigation, the paper interrogates the recent transformation of sugar cane production by South African investment and management. The paper identifies gender- and migration-based labour management practices that are not only consistent with a trend toward labour ‘flexibilisation’ within South African agribusiness practice, but also constitute rules and orders that reiterate Portuguese colonial practice. This analysis undermines current ahistorical narratives of the Açucareira de Xinavane – or Xinavane Sugar Mill – that depict the company as a beneficial exemplar of industrial production and technological advance. It suggests that the search of South African agribusiness for cheap labour north of its borders not only reinforces the low social and material valuing of Mozambican rural life and labour, but also reconstitutes labour relations from the country’s colonial past. This paper argues that these insights are critical to an understanding of the country’s post-conflict reconstruction, and its re-emerging linkages with South African capital.

Living in the Marikana world: The state, capital and society

The ‘Marikana massacre’ that happened on 16 August 2012 at Lonmin mine near Rustenburg in the North-West province of South Africa, in which the South African police shot dead 34 mineworkers for protesting against low wages and other unbearable employment and/or living conditions, cannot be understood as merely an accidental event. It may therefore be useful to view the massacre as one of those tragedies that dramatises, in visible ways, the generally hellish conditions which the peoples of the non-Western world have come to endure ever since the advent of Western modernity. The ‘voyages of discovery’ undertaken by figures such as Christopher Columbus after 1492 marked the commencement of a world system characterised by a Western-centred modernity whose ‘darker side’ inflicted hellish conditions on the non-Western subject, while its ‘brighter side’ in the West saw positive developments – from the 16th-century ‘rights of people’ to the 18th-century ‘rights of man’, up to the late-20th-century ‘human rights’. This article is a decolonial critique on the Marikana massacre and seeks to explain how the modern world system has, since its advent in 1492 as global power structure, been producing a series of ‘Marikana-like’ conditions and events on the part of the non-Western subject that underlies its hierarchical arrangement. The article's point of departure is that rather than understand the Marikana massacre as a unique event or accident, it can better be characterised as a sign of the non-Western subject's subjection to Western-centred modernity. The article explicates how the modern South African state and capital are part of the same ‘colonial power matrix’ (Quijano 2000a), hence the two were bound to be on the same side against labour during the Marikana massacre.

Introducing varieties of capitalism into the South African debate: uses and limits

The essays in this edited special issue aims to probe the nature and 'varieties' of capitalism that emerged and evolved in South Africa following the diamond and gold discoveries of the second half of the 19th century. Is there anything about the origins, evolution and structure of South African capitalism that is distinct or special? What are the continuities, and what the disjunctures, between the character of capitalism in South Africa before and since democratic change? Can one indeed talk about a model or models of South Africa capitalism? Are the rhythms of South Africa's capitalist development, its cycles and crises, determined by and form an inseparable part of capitalist accumulation trajectories on a global scale? Or can one argue that while some components of any national economy today will be inextricably driven by global imperatives, this exists alongside (in either mutually supportive or antagonistic ways) a set of institutions and a history that is essentially national in character. Finally, how similar or how different is contemporary South African capitalism from other models of capitalism - viewed either as stylised, theoretical constructions or in relation to comparable middle-income developing or emerging market economies. These and related themes are set out in this first essay.

Historical varieties of space, scale and speculation in South Africa: the uneven and combined geographical development of financialised capitalism

The central problem of Varieties of Capitalism analysis is its failure to assess dynamics of capital accumulation associated with finance and uneven and combined development. This is an especially critical shortcoming in what is probably the capitalist world's most extreme example of these phenomena, dating back at least two centuries. In reviewing the stylised history of financialised South African capitalism, a great many insights are provided about the ebb and flow of capital across space, scale and speculative outlets. These insights should lead policy makers into a much different understanding of the costs/benefits of financial liberalisation in the contemporary world. Yet central to this article's thesis is that with financialised economic activity comes banker power, and hence it is unrealistic to assume the a neoliberal Treasury and Reserve Bank will make the changes required to lessen the adverse effects of South Africa's extreme uneven and combined development.

Varieties of capitalism in emerging economies

Our contribution discusses the field of comparative capitalism research and it application to emerging economies. Based on criteria for a critical institutional analysis we review alternative models for the analysis of emerging market capitalisms. In doing so, we identify the model of state-permeated market economies (SMEs) as a suitable reference for emerging economies. Finally, the model of SMEs is discussed in the context of South African capitalism.

A ghost from the past: the South African developmental state of the 1940s

Bill Freund offers an account of the development of South African capitalism through the lens of the 'development state' model. This model is a label used in the variety of capitalism literature to describe state-business relations in some Asian economies, including Japan, in the post war era. Though focusing on the 1940s, Freund examines the early signs of such a model in the period immediately after the South African (Boer) war, associated with Alfred, Lord Milner, which has come to be known as the 'reconstruction' period. While conventional wisdom associates the policy initiatives of the 1924 Pact government around industrial and labour policy to the need to accommodate 'poor whites', Freund, following Christie, Clark and others, also argues that these and related policies also incorporated strong elements of industrialization (arguably though cautiously), even 'developmentalism'

A history of South African capitalism in national and global perspective

Keith Hart and Vishnu Padayachee locate the development of South African capitalism in the context of global developments in the long twentieth century, arguably the first time that such an analysis has been attempted. This paper grapples with multiple relationships, including that between the local and the global, the universal and the particular, and the historical and the present. The durable features of South African capitalism since its modern inception, it is argued, are mining, racial domination and an uneven relationship between the state, finance and industry. Although the national economy went through long swings between an external and internal orientation, each of the main periods highlighted in their analysis has been marked by both.

A bourgeois reform with social justice? The contradictions of the Minerals Development Bill and black economic empowerment in the South African platinum mining industry

Since assuming power in 1994, the African National Congress has pursued an ambitious policy of ‘modernising’ the minerals and mining sector in line with its overarching goal of developing an internationally competitive, non-racial and socially stabilised South African capitalism. This is a materialist analysis of the measures and evolution of that policy in the critically contested period between the release of the Minerals Development Bill (MDB) (December 2000) and its promulgation as the Minerals and Petroleum Resources Development Act (October 2002). Despite its apparent radicalism, the bill's core proposal to nationalise mineral rights is a variant of what Marx termed a ‘Ricardian reform’, here designed to accelerate capital accumulation by eliminating the barrier of private minerals ownership. Yet, the MDB also married this classically bourgeois reform with a nationalist commitment to racially transform the structure of mine ownership, thus embodying key contradictions of South Africa's democratic transition in the era of neoliberalism. The struggle over the final form and benefits of the new minerals dispensation would be centred on the platinum industry, where the established (white) producers had the most to lose from the legal abolition of the old mineral property system in favour of the nationalisation and strategic redistribution of the resource base. [Une réforme bourgeoise avec une justice sociale ? Les contradictions du Projet de loi de Développement des Minéraux et l'Emancipation Economique des Noirs dans l'industrie minière du platine d'Afrique du Sud]. Depuis son arrivée au pouvoir en 1994, l'ANC a poursuivi une politique ambitieuse de la ≪ modernisation ≫ du secteur des minerais et des mines en accord avec son objectif global de développer un capitalisme propre à l'Afrique du sud, compétitif au niveau international, non racialement ségrégationniste et socialement fiable. Il s'agit d'une analyse matérialiste des mesures et de l'évolution de cette politique dans la période gravement contestée entre la sortie du Projet de Loi sur le Développement des Minéraux (MDB décembre 2000) et sa promulgation en tant que loi du Développement des Ressources Pétrolières et Minérales (octobre 2002). Malgré son radicalisme apparent, la proposition de base du projet de loi visant à nationaliser les droits miniers est une variante de ce que Marx appelait une ≪ réforme ricardienne ≫, ici conçue pour accélérer l'accumulation du capital en éliminant la barrière de la propriété privée des minéraux. Cependant le MDB a également épousé cette réforme bourgeoise classique avec un engagement nationaliste de transformer radicalement la structure de la propriété minière, incarnant ainsi les contradictions clés de la transition démocratique en Afrique du Sud à l'ère du néolibéralisme. La lutte pour la forme finale et les avantages de la nouvelle dispensation sur les minéraux seraient centrés sur l'industrie du platine, où les producteurs (blancs) établis avaient le plus à perdre de l'abolition légale du système de propriété minérale ancienne en faveur de la nationalisation et de la redistribution stratégiques de la base de ressources. Mots-clés: l'ANC; l'émancipation économique des Noirs; les droits miniers; la nationalisation; l'industrie du platine; la politique des ressources; la réforme ricardienne

Shosholoza: Political Culture in South Africa between the Secular and the Occult

In this article, I explore the relationship between two central strands in contemporary political culture in South Africa, the secular and the occult. These two strands are often seen as running parallel to one another and perceived as mutually exclusive, where one is dominant while the other is confined to obscurity and rendered invisible. Contrary to this view, I argue that historically both strands have co-existed in South Africa, and further that they animate one another. Indeed in South African politics the secular and the occult co-exist interdependently; their separation is a practice that legitimates specific forms of politics and the formation of political culture. I explore and illustrate the co-dependency and intertwining of these political strands through ethnographic data collected in Mpumalanga between 2002 and 2006 relating to witchcraft accusations. I relate this material to scholarly literature on South African capitalism and generational hierarchies. Through this analysis I wish to contribute to current discussions about political culture in order to transcend narrow understandings of what constitute politics in South Africa and beyond.

LABOUR INFLUENCE IN THE NEW SOUTH AFRICAN GOVERNMENT

South Africa's labour movement has unprecedented access to state power in Pretoria via SA Communist Party ministers and a new ministerial post devoted to economic development held by a labour leader. But this power comes with structural constraints, no matter the courage of leaders. The economic collapse suffered since 2008 is only the latest stage in an unfolding crisis of accumulation which South African capital has only shaken since the 1970s through escaping the country's shores, through financialisation, and through imposition of neoliberal policies on the society. But these have not generated a sustainable growth path, but instead, yet more social tensions. How labour marshals and channels these tensions is the crucial test of the coming period.

Milking the region? South African capital and Zambia’s dairy industry

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South African Capital in the Land of Ujamaa: Contested Terrain in Tanzania1

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Capitalism of a special type? South African capitalism before and after 1994

Capitalism of a special type? South African capitalism before and after 1994

The chimera of redistribution in post-apartheid South Africa: ‘Black Economic Empowerment’ (BEE) in industrial fisheries

Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) is an attempt to marry redistributive and neo-liberal economic policies. The South African state, however, has differing degrees of power to force redistribution on different sectors of the economy. Fisheries is one of the sectors where state allocation of licenses, exploitation rights and quotas makes the prospects for BEE promising. In this article, we examine redistributive processes in the hake trawl industry. We conclude that BEE, despite its redistributive intentions, has been doubly conducive to the interests of large-scale South African capital. To begin with, it has by and large confirmed the historical share of fishing rights to incumbent, largely white-controlled, operators. Second, it has created a layer of ‘black captains of industry’ to whom incumbents are increasingly outsourcing primary production in a volatile, high-risk and currently loss-leading sector. While fishing operations are being outsourced under the banner of redistribution, the fish trade remains under the effective control of white capital.