The recent shift in South African economic policy towards a more interventionist regime has sparked new academic interest in the concept of the developmental state within the South African context. This paper aims to shed light on whether the South African state has the capacity to be developmental, while at the same time broadening the academic debate by tackling conceptual issues. The theoretical ambiguity of the notion of the developmental state leaves ample room for interpretation. Critical omissions are an explicit class analysis and a consideration of the specific system of accumulation in place. In a political context, this ambiguity can be exploited by competing factions, as evidenced in the ongoing internal conflict in South Africas ruling party. In other words, developmental state means different things to different people and these contrasting interpretations have played a significant role in South African party politics. In order to understand these debates, we must look at the underlying class interests and the accumulation
regime that has shaped them. An analysis of South African industrial policy will show that conflicting interests and the resulting competing visions of the developmental state have led to an incoherent policy and lie at the heart of capacity and coherence problems that impede the South African developmental state.
