Swimming against the tide: the Macro-Economic Research Group in the South African transition 1991–94

Abstract

This article focuses on the establishment and disowning of the Macro-Economic Research Group (MERG) by the African National Congress in the lead-up to the formation of the democratic dispensation of 1994 and the first elections, overwhelmingly won by the African National Congress (ANC), which still forms the national government of South Africa. Considerable emphasis is placed on the politics of the ANC and to a lesser extent the general situation of the South African economy rather than by dissecting economic debates alone. MERG was a relatively lone substantial voice calling for real structural and institutional changes in the economy, ultimately rejected by the ANC at the behest of business. Two decades after the end of apartheid, it has become a hallmark of liberal criticism of the government to denounce it as following the worked-out agenda of a radical agenda underlying the anti-apartheid rhetoric while the African National Congress clothes itself in the liberation language of the Freedom Charter and sometimes even the supposed first-stage National Democratic Revolution that will precede socialism reflecting the discourse of the South African Communist Party. The following discussion aims to clarify what actually happened in terms of macro-economic policy debates in the transitional years 1990–94 and the consequences.