Changes in the Political Economy of the New South Africa

Abstract

Politics and economics in South Africa have often been interpreted as possessing almost a distinctive life of their own yet able, paradoxically, fundamentally to affect one another. Such a perspective has been evident in both ‘Marxist’ and ‘liberal’ interpretations of South Africa’s political history.1 Horwitz, for instance, argued that ‘the polity has always sought its ideal and ideology — the white man’s supremacy. The network of economic development had to follow accordingly.’2 A recognition that economic and political factors are in dynamic interaction rather than one determining the other is an underlying assumption of this chapter. Before 1990 the focus of such interpretations of South Africa’s political economy tended to be associated with a debate about whether apartheid constrained or aided economic growth. In the new South Africa economic growth is widely regarded as a precondition for the attainment of important political and economic objectives: everybody wants it, but there is some disagreement as to how to achieve it. The issue of economic growth, however, underlines a much wider debate about the role and extent of state involvement in the economy.