Shifting Boundaries of the MEC: Toujours la Même Chose

Abstract

ABSTRACT:This article focuses on the material interdependencies between sectors in the South African economy in the input-output sense as one core strand of the Systems of Accumulation analysis that informs the framing of the Minerals-Energy Complex and its evolution into a financialised Minerals-Energy-Finance Complex. Drawing on updated input–output analysis and sectoral investment trends from 1993 to 2023, it demonstrates that, despite its declining share of gross domestic product, the Minerals-Energy Complex core, as a set of economic sectors, is characterised by exceptionally strong intra sectoral linkages but weak connections to the rest of the economy. This persistent cohesion continues to skew industrial development towards capital intensive heavy industries, constraining diversification into labour absorbing manufacturing and reinforcing long standing patterns of disarticulation and unevenness. Post 1994 policy choices – shaped by conglomerate interests, rapid financial liberalisation, and the adoption of neoliberal macroeconomic frameworks – further entrenched these dynamics. The unbundling and internationalisation of South African conglomerates, combined with financialisation and large scale capital flight, redirected surpluses away from productive investment and deepened deindustrialisation outside the Minerals-Energy Complex core. This article argues that the Minerals-Energy-Finance Complex has become central to understanding South Africa's contemporary polycrisis, including low growth, low investment, high unemployment and extreme inequality. Rather than enabling industrialisation out of the Minerals-Energy Complex, financialisation has amplified procyclical shocks, undermined state capacity and intensified structural vulnerabilities. By tracing the historical evolution, material linkages and political-economic drivers of the Minerals-Energy Complex/Minerals-Energy-Finance Complex, the article shows how this system continues to shape the limits of industrial transformation and the reproduction of crisis in democratic South Africa.