Public Administration highlighted the discrepancies between the international, national and sub-national administrations, prompting calls for state capitalism meta-governance. The latter is established in the state-capital nexus, through corporatisation of public utilities into giant state-owned companies that gobble public funds in public-private partnerships that involve consortiums led by multinational corporations. Rather than serve public interest mandates, and aided by state activism, state-owned companies operate as visible paradoxical agents of the invisible hand of market capitalism. The paper demonstrates that public contestations about the Gauteng Freeways state activism on e-tolling and the imperatives of the Gauteng Management Agency-Bombela nexus and contract, as well as the Gautrain ridership capacity conundrums, provide evidence that practice of state capitalism meta-governance involves state activism which emboldens