By the 1980s apartheid was framed as a distinct form of racial capitalism

Evidence

As the “race-class debate” lingered and the issues seemed to grow stale, it became increasingly fashionable to pronounce its epitaph. But its imprint remained clearly visible within the conventional wisdom of the 1980s, in the conviction that apartheid was essentially a system of “racial capitalism” — capitalism of a particular (“racial”) type. With “race” thoroughly infused in the trajectory of economic development, it seemed that research at the coalface of class would simultaneously serve to illuminate the workings of “race.” — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 569

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the influential ‘racial capitalism’ formulation that dominated scholarship on apartheid in the 1980s.