Fine, B., and Rustomjee, Z. (1996). The Political Economy of South Africa: From Minerals-Energy Complex to Industrialisation. London: Hurst.
Fine and Rustomjee describe a minerals-energy complex: mining and cheap coal-fired electricity, with the heavy industry and finance organized around them, which shaped state policy and investment through the twentieth century. They argue that this core persisted through apartheid’s import-substitution phase and held back diversification into other manufacturing. The wiki reads the complex as South Africa’s form of throughput economics in South Africa on the Curve. The book was not read directly for that page; its argument enters through the research report and secondary accounts.