Latent State Infrastructure and Financialisation: Insight from a Post-Apartheid Public Pension Fund and Real Estate

Abstract

South Africa's Government Employees Pension Fund (GEPF) is among the world's largest pension funds, public or private. The pension fund's sizeable coffers reflect reforms to its structure undertaken as a safeguard for apartheid bureaucrats. Today, the fund is entangled in South Africa's financial markets. Through an analysis of the GEPF's investment in real estate, it is shown how investments by a government employees’ pension fund intertwine with real estate financialisation in South Africa. Representative of the latent state infrastructure that is not often the site of interrogation in scholarship nor activism, the case of the GEPF can help expand our understanding of the relationship between the state and financialisation.