Overview

In State-Business Relations and Economic Transformation in South Africa and Zimbabwe: Unfinished Transformation, Sinan Baran examines state-business relations (SBRs) in semi-peripheral South Africa and peripheral Zimbabwe after each country’s transition to majority rule to address why SBRs are likely to either consolidate or fracture in post-transition communities. In both countries, the majority governments faced unresolved, post-transition divisions relating to race, inequality, and underdevelopment. Baran analyzes the liberalisation and indigenisation policy choices intended to address these areas that are impacting the mining industries in South Africa and Zimbabwe as case studies. Using comparative analysis and a Modern World-Systems lens, he argues that semi-peripheral countries are less susceptible to pressures from domestic and external powers than peripheral countries during periods of economic transformation. He further argues that China’s significant political and economic presence in a peripheral country like Zimbabwe has more effect on SBRs than in a semi-peripheral country like South Africa.

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9781666920024

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Reviews

This important book offers a highly original account of business-state relations in South Africa as a semi-peripheral and Zimbabwe as a peripheral country in the world economy. It demonstrates how the different relationships these governments have with international investors impacts their indigenisation policies, and how these fracture or consolidate these relationships. This book offers a major contribution to the literature on business-state relations in southern Africa. -- Roger Southall, University of the Witwatersrand An insightful investigation of state-corporate relations in Zimbabwe and South Africa, framed by the unsettled capitalist world and the very divergent political settlements of the last four decades. This is a admirably complex project, tracing in imbricated detail shifting phases of liberalization and indigenization, the impact of successive global economic crises, and competing political and policy choices by post-national liberation states advancing racial redistribution objectives. It is rare indeed to find such a careful examination of these elements across such diverse areas of the world-economy. Particular attention is wisely paid to the mining sector and the evolving relationship between international capital forces and divergent state initiatives. The signal findings here derive from a commitment to move beyond the limits of rigid North-South units of analysis, and explore instead the ascendant regional and East-South relationships that have so undermined past theories and models of the Atlantic-led world. Extended attention to the divergent role of China and Chinese firms in peripheral Zimbabwe and semiperipheral South Africa generates especially novel findings. Essential reading for those seeking to envisage southern Africa's possibilities in the emerging multipolar, post-neoliberal world-economy. -- William G. Martin, Professor Emeritus, Binghamton University An insightful investigation of state-corporate relations in Zimbabwe and South Africa, framed by the unsettled capitalist world and the very divergent political settlements of the last four decades. This is a admirably complex project, tracing in imbricated detail shifting phases of liberalization and indigenization, the impact of successive global economic crises, and competing political and policy choices by post-national liberation states advancing racial redistribution objectives. Essential reading for those seeking to envisage southern Africa's possibilities in the emerging multipolar, post-neoliberal world-economy. -- William G. Martin, Professor Emeritus, Binghamton University

Author Information

Sinan Baran is lecturer in the Department of International Relations at Kırşehir Ahi Evran University.

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