Engaging with the World: Corporate South Africa and the Rise of non-OECD multinationals in Global Economic Governance

The extant literature on business and politics tends to focus almost exclusively on Multinational Corporations (MNCs) from OECD countries. This is understandable when given that most trade flows and foreign direct investments occur between OECD countries. However, the changing face of global economic power with the rise of China, India and Brazil provides the impetus for scholars of global economic governance to rethink the narrow focus of the actors engaged in economic governance as restricted to those representing corporate entities and states within in the developed world alone. This paper will argue that research into global economic governance structures must begin to give account of the increasingly important role being played by MNCs from developing countries. In building a case for doing this, the paper will focus on the shifting role of South African business in the global political economy during the post-apartheid period (1994 and beyond). During the apartheid era South African companies couldn’t expand internationally, but following the release of Nelson Mandela in 1990 with the lifting of sanctions this began to change. As trade barriers fell and South African companies faced increasing competition in their previously protected home markets they had to respond to the challenge by seeking investment and market opportunities elsewhere. The first and most obvious point of growth was th