The South African Economy, 1994–2004

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Vishnu Padayachee The South African Economy, 1994-2004 1. INTRODUCTION Various perspectives emerge from the flood of official government reviews, academic and union conference proceedings, books, and special issues of journals that review South Africa’s economic perfor­ mance during its first decade of democracy.1Some are supportive of government economic policy, others are more reflexive and critical, and a few are openly hostile. This paper focuses on a narrow range of issues within the broad theme of economic policy and performance. These include macroeconomic stability and performance, developments in the labor market, and trends in poverty and inequality. A number of clearly important areas, including black economic empowerment, industrial policy, South Africa’s re-insertion into the global economy, are not addressed, given the constraints of our mandate. Although the paper ends with some ideas about the kind ofpolicy approaches govern­ ment could consider to address the continuing challenges of reducing unemployment, inequality and poverty, no comprehensive model is proposed to achieve this. Sections 2 through 4 set out the initial conditions of the economy at the time of the transition, examines the policy options that emerged (within the dominant African National Congress alliance), and then review the countiy’s decade-long economic record in some detail. Section 5 looks at the same issues from a broader and more impressionistic angle to capture the core of the problems, as we see them. Aspects of the current response ofgovernment are set out in section 6, before a briefconclusion. social research Vol 72 : No 3 : Fall 2005 549 Our argument is straightforward. Despite notable success in the area of macroeconomic management, improved and continuous output growth in the second halfof this period, and not inconsiderable success in delivery of social and physical infrastructure, significant problems continue to exist in addressing the very issues that were at the heart of the government’s economic thinking in the early 1990s. Specifically, the formal labor market does not appear to be able to absorb new entrants in sufficient numbers to bring down the unemployment rate, and few signs that suggest that poverty and inequality are being effec­ tively addressed. 2. THE SOUTH AFRICAN ECONOMY IN 1993-1994 South Africa entered the transition period with some advantages in rela­ tion to global economic developments at that time. Its manufacturing sector was relatively large and diversified; it had been open to inflows of foreign direct investment and technology for many decades; it had a not insignificant physical, banking, and human resource base; it had devel­ oped a globally competitive edge in some complex activities (metallurgy, mining equipment, chemicals and paper), albeit behind high protec­ tive barriers (Lall, 1993: 3); and in “sheer economic terms South Africa [seemed] to fit the profile of the kinds of countries that have indeed been able to take advantage of changed investor sentiment to re-enter international capital markets in a major way” (Krugman, 1993:46). However, in its last years in office, the National Party, for reasons of political opportunism and economic profligacy, presided over a rapid growth in government debt as a proportion of GDP. The budget defi­ cit rose from 0.9 percent of GDP in 1989-1990 to 9.2 percent in 19921993 and 10.8 percent in 1993-1994. This was exacerbated by cyclical factors, since government revenues were affected by the downturn in overall economic activity (Gibson and van Seventer, 1995: 2). Despite the growth in the budget deficits, the ratio of total national debt to GDP (including the debt of the homeland governments) stood at 52.5 percent in March 1994, which was not high by international standards. (Under the European Union’s Maastricht Treaty, for example, anything 550 social research below 60 percent was deemed acceptable.) However, there is little doubt that servicing this level of debt was going to have negative implications for social spending in the postapartheid era and was not therefore a sustainable position. Tight monetary policy, including high positive real interest rates, had forced the underlying annual average inflation rate down from a peak of 15 percent in 1991 to around 8 percent at the time of the 1994 election. One reason for this tight policy approach at the...