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Development Economics and Perspectives on the South African Economy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 April 2015

Neva Seidman Makgetla
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As a rule, in the Third World, social scientists and governments present their economic strategies in terms of national ends—typically, in the 1980's, as some variant of a supply-side, basic-needs or socialist approach. Similarly, in South Africa, the debate on policies to transform the economy away from apartheid often focused on the feasibility and desirability of different social systems. Yet each strategy originally arose out of a particular analysis of problems commonly afflicting Third World countries, including South Africa. Making that analysis explicit permits a more systematic evaluation of its applicability to South Africa and other countries. To facilitate such an assessment, this article reframes the three development strategies that rose to prominence in the 1980's in line with a problem-oriented, explanatory methodology, and suggests how each general analysis would apply in South Africa.

Type
Perspectives on South African Liberation Valparaiso University School of Law Symposium October 28-31, 1987
Information
Journal of Law and Religion , Volume 5 , Issue 2 , 1987 , pp. 367 - 419
Copyright
Copyright © Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University 1987

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References

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3. In economics, a significant debate between capitalist and socialist theories is whether the market represents an unalterable condition necessary for any economy to function no matter what its drawbacks, or a malleable cause of various social problems which is open to policy influence.

4. In other words, the methodology used here implies a conflict view of society.

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Similarly, in the work of authors in the neo-classical tradition, we watch Economic Analysis ride out to combat, ultimately,

the multi-headed ogre who imprisons fair efficiency in the castle keep for stupid and selfish reasons. In each case Economic (I suppose we can be so familiar) brings to bear his single-minded self, and the Evil Ones (who like most in the literature are in reality mere chimerae of some mad or wrongheaded magician) dissolve, one after the other.

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46. Id.

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51. Supply-side adherents usually only imply that members of interest groups pressing for unfair advantages are lazy and dishonorable. Horwitz expresses the position more openly in his discussion of poor whites. See Horwitz, supra note 30.

52. Horwitz, supra note 30, at 4-5.

53. Id. at 8; see also Lipton, supra note 1, at 113-16; Nattrass, supra note 1, at 73-74.

54. Lipton, supra note 1, at 294.

55. Dickman, supra note 18, at 58.

56. Id. at 62.

57. Kantor and Kenney, supra note 49, at 34.

58. Simkins, supra note 48, at 19-20.

59. Id. at 17.

60. Id. at 6.

61. Bromberger, supra note 30, at 97.

62. Kantor and Rees, supra note 12, at 47; see also Moore, and Smit, , Wages, Money and Inflation, 54 S. Afr. J. of Econ. 1, 93 (1986)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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67. Id. at 17.

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71. Kantor and Rees, supra note 48, at 38; see also Lomard, supra note 65, at 13.

72. Id.

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81. See Country Profile 1986/87, supra note 14, at 10.

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83. Keenan and Sarak, supra note 77, at 110; see also Ndaba, supra note 82, at 8.

84. Nattrass, supra note 1, at 182.

85. Id. at 288.

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87. Nattrass, supra note 1, at 95.

88. Id. at 29.

89. Id. at 99.

90. Black and Stanwix, supra note 16, at 5.

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92. Id. at 162-63.

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109. Id. at 31.

110. Id. at 122.

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113. Id. at 116.

114. Id. at 117.

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120. Simkins, Public Expenditure and the Poor: Political and Economic Constraints on Policy Choices Up to the Year 2000, Second Carnegie Inquiry No. 253, supra note 76, at 30.

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128. Nattrass, supra note 116, at 186.

129. Nattrass, supra note 1, at 79.

130. Ndaba, supra note 82, at 17-20.

131. Levy, supra note 101, at 17.

132. Nattrass, supra note 116, at 189-90.

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135. McGrath, supra note 123, at 48-49.

136. See Motsuenyane, NAFCOC in Search of Solutions in Southern Africa, in Thomas, supra note 1, at 1.

137. Nattrass, supra note 116, at 189-90.

138. Id.; see also Thomas, Toward a “Social Market Economy”, in Thomas, supra note 1, at 104.

139. Rupert, supra note 30, at 99.

140. Id. at 100.

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154. Id. at 41.

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163. Adler, Social Welfare and the Democratisation of the Economy, quoted in Thomas, supra note 1, at 86.

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168. Hofmeyr and Nicol, supra note 164, at 84.

169. See Muad, supra note 167, at 297-98; Welsh, Political Economy of Afrikaner Nationalism, in Leftwich, supra note 12, at 273.

170. During the 1987 mine strike, the notoriously liberal company, Anglo-American, met black miners' demands for higher wages by firing thousands and refusing to make concessions.

171. This becomes clear from examination of country risk reports by major American banks and from the articles by Brand, Simon, and Dickman cited above.

172. Motlatsi, supra note 152, at 39.

173. Id. at 42.

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175. COSATU Executive Committee, supra note 144, at 79.

176. Motlatsi, supra note 152, at 44.

177. COSATU Executive Committee, supra note 144, at 52.

178. Motlatsi, supra note 152, at 44.

179. COSATU Executive Committee, supra note 144, at 82.

180. Id. at 79.

181. Id. at 82.

182. In the mid-1980's, the Government of Zimbabwe organized and supplied engineers to several fairly successful worker-owned mines.

183. Davies, supra note 1, at 94.

184. Motlatsi, supra note 152, at 47.