Journal of Southern African StudiesPublication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information:'Hoje, quando ouvem que vai ter eleições, as pessoas vão comprar sal.' Por quê? 'A última vez fugimos sem sal.' 1 When the people today hear that there'll be elections, they go and buy salt. Why? The last time, we fled and forgot to pack salt.'Votar significa mudar o rumo das coisas. ' 2 To vote means to change the path of things.

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This article looks at how actors commonly associated with the separate spheres of the state, private industry, and civil society, are engaging in wilful entanglements to improve the Mozambican state’s capacities in managing the country’s nascent extractive industry sector. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in and around the Ministry of Mineral Resources and Energy, the article suggests that these entanglements renegotiate and co-produce ideas and practices of the state. Historicising and ethnographically unpacking these interactions invites us to rethink one-dimensional accounts of a hollowing out of bounded, nation-state sovereignty under the influence of globalised capitalism.