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This special section focuses on South Africa as a developing country with considerable experience of financialization over a long period of time. The three pieces offered here further the current debate, covering specific topics (eg corporate cash holdings) and analytical innovations (eg discussing financialization in global value chains). Each illustrates that there are good reasons to presume that financialization has destructive potential when unfolding in emerging and developing regions, as is acknowledged in the Global North. To situate South Africa’s financialization in a comparative view, some historical context is appropriate. The economy has long and strong international contacts with finance, not least because of European (particularly English) financing of huge investments to fund diamond and gold mining (Kubicek, 1979). Under apartheid, two features were particularly important. First, mining conglomerates …