Growth , Employment And Redistribution Research Articles

Fiscal Policy and Economic Growth in South Africa

Several fiscal policy strategies have been implemented in South Africa since 1994, starting from the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP), Growth Employment and Redistribution (GEAR), Broad-Black Economic Empowerment strategy (BEE), AsgiSA (Accelerated and shared growth initiative for South Africa), and the New Growth Path framework (NGP) with the aim of boosting economic growth. However, the rate of economic growth in the country over the years is not convincing. It is also important to note that poverty still remains prevalent and persistent, predominantly in the poverty-stricken areas of provinces such as Eastern Cape, Limpopo, North West, and Mpumalanga. In light of this, the main aim of the study was to examine the effect of fiscal policy instruments on economic growth in South Africa for the period from 1988 to 2018, utilising the autoregressive distributed lag model, mainly due to the order of integration of the variables. Empirical results revealed that there is a positive relationship between fiscal policy instruments (public sector expenditure, public consumption spending, and taxation) and economic growth. Based on the findings, the study recommends that the government should distinguish between productive and unproductive spending and increase spending on productive sectors. The implication of these findings is that South Africa’s economy is likely to perform better if more resources are diverted from government consumption to investment spending.

The relationship between foreign direct investment and economic growth in South Africa: Vector error correction analysis

Orientation: From the Growth, Employment and Redistribution (GEAR) strategy of 1996 to the currently implemented National Development Plan (NDP), the need to attract more foreign investors and promote exports in pursuit of economic growth and job creation has been emphasised.Research purpose: It is within this context that the purpose of this article was to determine the nexus between foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows and economic growth from 1980 to 2014.Research design, approach and method: The vector error correction model is employed to determine and estimate the long-run relationship between the variables in the model.Main findings: From the findings, it was found that economic growth shares a positive relationship with both FDIs and the real effective exchange rate, while sharing a negative long-run relationship with government expenditure.Practical and managerial implications: The article contributes towards the on going debates on the impact of FDIs on economic growth and job creation in the recipient countries. Accordingly, its findings reinforce the importance of attracting FDIs in South Africa and to what extent they affect economic growth and employment.Contribution or value-add: From a policy perspective, the attraction of foreign investors must target sources that can create jobs and boost the South African economy. It is vital for the government to strengthen its machinery to fight corruption to create an environment conducive for foreign investors. Hence, this article suggests that South Africa’s capacity to grow and create jobs also depends on the country’s performance to enhance gross domestic product growth and attract more FDIs. The attraction of FDIs should, however, not be seen as an end in itself but also as a means of supporting other initiatives such as eradicating poverty and inequalities in South Africa.

South Africa\u2019s Economic Transformation Since 1994: What Influence has the National Democratic Revolution (NDR) Had?

When the African National Congress (ANC) became the democratic government of South Africa in 1994, it faced the challenge of transforming the economy. How this was to be done, however, revolved around two divergent views of the National Democratic Revolution (NDR) which forms the underlying ideology or glue that binds together the Tripartite Alliance comprising the ANC, the South African Communist Party (SACP) and the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), the largest workers’ union in the country. Transformation could be achieved either radically through measures such as nationalisation where political control would be transposed into economic power, or via a more liberal route involving the promotion of macro-economic development and the growth of company earnings. This article investigates how the ANC government has sought to bring about the much-needed transformation by providing summary analyses of the following macro-economic policies: the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP), the Growth, Employment and Redistribution (GEAR) strategy, the Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative - South Africa (ASGISA), the New Growth Path (NGP) and the National Development Plan (NDP). Evidence suggests that while the NDR promised radical results, the economic transformation that has been taking place in South Africa since 1994 has been driven largely by neo-liberal principles. This is in contrast to what the ANC claims in various policy documents and what various scholars, such as Jeffery (2010:5) and Venter (2012), have also claimed. As South Africa’s economic fortunes have declined in recent years in the face of mounting external pressures and internal policy uncertainty, this deviation from the original ideology and plan is causing significant discord in the country.

Quotidianism of “Newness” in “Oldness”: Modernism, Poverty and Inequality in South Africa

This paper illustrates that South Africa's democratic governance has not eradicated apartheid structural matrices of poverty and inequality. Over the past 20 years, South Africa reinvented newness in oldness through at least three neo-libertarian development trajectories. After replacing the 1994 Reconstruction and Development Programme with the 1996 Growth, Employment and Redistribution (GEAR), South Africa adopted the 2012 National Development Plan (NDP) 2030 Vision, which portrays itself as a departure from entitlement and state welfarism to developmental paradigm. But this self-proclaimed paradigmatic shift reflexively reinvents GEAR's unrealistic hope of marrying orthodox modernity with social equity and redistributive justice through fast economic growth. The NDP places the burden of development on the victims of apartheid capitalism. Tacitly, it provides neoliberal matrices similar to those of GEAR macroeconomics. Also, it makes a promise that it equally undermines through continuities wherein newness is reflexively invoked in oldness, thereby rendering experiences of poverty and inequality quotidian. The paper analyzes statistical trends of poverty and inequality to demonstrate that their continuities have become quotidian amidst pronouncements of newness of policy.

Access to Quality Health Services for All South Africans through the National Health Insurance Scheme: Lessons from Singapore

The South African health system both in the public and private sectors is fraught with many challenges which render the system unsustainable, costly, hospi-centric, and destructive. In order to curb this loop hole in the health sector, South Africa introduced the National Health Insurance (NHI) that is aimed at providing universal coverage of health care. The objectives of NHI is to provide improved access to quality health services for all South Africans irrespective of whether they are employed or not; to pool risks and funds so that equity and social solidarity will be achieved through the creation of a single fund, to procure services on behalf of the entire population and efficiently mobilize and control key financial resources and to strengthen the under-resourced and strained public sector so as to improve health systems performance. This paper evaluates the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP), Growth, Employment and Redistribution (GER), New Growth Path (NGP) and National Development Plan (NDP) policies to determine the challenges and positive aspects of these policies that can be used for the successful implementation of the NHI. The paper further draws lessons from Singapore that has already implemented the NHI and argues that South Africa can learn a lot from these countries experiences. It is concluded that each of the countries provide inspiring positive lessons and also show areas of challenges from which South Africa can draw some lessons. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2014.v5n23p2722

The Storm of Poverty Reduction Strategy in Africa: Chronology of Experiences from South Africa

The paper present the trend of government programmes and interventions used in tackling the endemic problem of abject poverty. The pluralistic nature of these programmes is encouraged by the dynamic socio-economic circumstances within South Africa domain. Concerns raised from “Towards a Ten Year Review” emphasised the necessity to harmonize all Government’s development programmes under a single structure or “Social compact”. In view of the importance of agriculture, particularly for developing countries, a large aspect of the development discourse around agriculture has been focused on poverty alleviation. Across all nine provinces, the noticeable and critical problem is poverty which the government needs to contend with and address. The challenges faced presently in the reduction of poverty are numerous. Key programme responses of the South African government considered in this paper are: Legal context, Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP), Growth, Employment and Redistribution (GEAR), Local government transformation, Land reform programme, Skill support and Development Programme, Farmer support and Extension services, Support for emerging farmers, National Public Works Programme (NPWP), Integrated Sustainable Rural Development Strategy (ISRDS), Social grants and unemployment, Education and poverty reduction, Agriculture Black Economic Empowerment (AgriBEE), Provincial Growth and Development Strategy (PGDS), Local Economic Development (LED) and Donors’ in poverty alleviation through Official Development Assistance (ODA).

The Binary Conception of Economics, Janus-Faced Development and the Aspiration for Accelerated and Shared Growth in South Africa

Neoliberal macroeconomics delivered positive economic growth for most developing economies, amidst persistent deprivation and inequalities, and rigged market capitalism wherein the state incrementally substitutes itself for society, paradoxically creating bloated welfare rather than people participation, empowerment and human development. South Africa’s pursuit of Growth, Employment and Redistribution (GEAR) produced positive economic growth devoid of human development. Inevitably, government adopted Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative for South Africa (AsgiSA) in 2006 with the intention of engendering “shared” growth for all. This article argues that the occurrence of Janus-faced development in South Africa reflects the failure of micro-scale people empowerment that is precipitated by the exclusion of poor people’s “asset base” from treatment as productive and investment capital within the hegemonic GEAR macroeconomics. It concludes that AsgiSA would fail to engender “shared” growth because it does not provide for the (re)capitalisation of the bottom half of society as its primary transformative agenda.

Rural Education in South Africa: A Critical Reflection on Government Reconstruction and Development Efforts

Rural development strategies in South Africa are not achieving their goals, namely, the reconstruction and restructuring of the living conditions of the majority of people located in rural areas. Although different rural development strategies have been introduced by the African National Congress (ANC) government since it came to power in 1994, the state of provision of education to rural learners remains abysmal. This article provides a critical reflection on state reconstruction and development in South Africa by reviewing the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP), Growth, Employment and Redistribution (GEAR) strategy and the Comprehensive Rural Development Programme (CRDP). The article further investigates the impact of the ANC's economi c policy on the provision of education in rural areas. Document analysis as a research method is used to examine and interpret data in order to extract meaning, gain comprehension, and furthermore develop and widen empirical knowledge on the influence of government policies on the provision of education to learners in rural areas. The findings reveal that the government's reconstruction and development policies, backed by neo-liberal thinking, failed to make an impact on reducing past imbalances, and thus failed to address pressing issues in rural areas. Based on the findings, the study calls for the government to take the central role and to ensure that its reconstruction and development policies address what they are intended for.

South African cinema after apartheid: A political-economic exploration

When South Africa was emancipated from the oppressive apartheid regime in 1994, it was a severely divided society in need of an inclusive national identity to bind its citizens and maintain peace. Therefore, the state targeted the cultural industries, including film, as a means of promoting symbolic representations of national unity. The film industry was further identified as a priority sector for economic growth and as a potential platform for equitable redress. This article discusses existing and emerging finance, distribution and exhibition structures in the post-apartheid film industry. It considers government interventions in the form of film policies and development strategies with the purpose of examining the influence of globalising forces, in particular neoliberalism, on the apparent market-orientation of such interventions. The results presented indicate that the post-apartheid vision of equality, freedom and diversity does not always sit comfortably with the neoliberal, free-market principles promoted in the Growth, Employment and Redistribution (GEAR) programme of 1996. Moreover, it suggests that in this commercial environment, the voices of the historically oppressed black majority, rather than enjoying a sense of artistic and creative freedom, can in fact encounter commercial censorship through the commodification of films for an export-orientated market.

The South African ‘Information Society’, 1994–2008: Problems with Policy, Legislation, Rhetoric and Implementation

This article closely examines the political economy of information and communication technology (ICT) adoption in the ‘new’ South Africa. Despite Government's emphasis on the importance of ICTs in fostering equitable growth, enshrined in the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) and Growth, Employment and Redistribution (GEAR) documents, these policies have largely failed to deliver on promises of a more equitable society.1Indeed, wealth remains in the hands of an elite minority. South Africa ranks 121st out of 177 countries on the Human Development Index (HDI).2 The trend of this index in South Africa has been downward since 1995 and decreased by 4.67 per cent over the 2000 to 2005 period.3 Worryingly, unofficial unemployment stands at over 40 per cent.4 Intriguingly, despite this apparent lack of impact of ICTs on development indicators in South Africa, the ANC Government continues to embrace them. With this in mind, this article argues that the technological determinism in associating ICTs with development is a potentially fatal one and is cause for concern. This determinism is explored through the lenses of competing, contradictory and inconsistent Government views on ICT policy, the digital divide, development and a case study of the cellphone. 1 P. Bond, Elite Transition: From Apartheid to Neoliberalism in South Africa (London, Pluto, 2000); P. Bond, Talk Left, Walk Right: South Africa's Frustrated Global Reforms (Pietermaritzburg, UKZN, 2004); A. Desai, ‘Karl Marx's the Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon: The Coming of Power of Napoleon: The Eighteenth Brumaire of Nelson-Mbeki’ (video recording), E.G. Malherbe Library, Howard College, University of KwaZulu-Natal, 2004; A. Habib and V. Padayachee, ‘Economic Policy and Power Relations in South Africa's Transition to Democracy’, World Development, 28, 2 (February 2000). 2 These statistics are derived from the United Nations Development Programme, Human Development Report 2007/2008 (New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), p. 231. A possible explanation for this trend is offered by Bond as being a result of the geopolitics of socio-economic disparities in South Africa. This, he says, is due largely to the effects of neo-liberalism, which have brought about a deviation from the concerns of the black majority of South Africans. See Bond, Talk Left, Walk Right. 3 Derived from United Nations Development Programme, Human Development Report 2007/2008, p. 236. 4 Official unemployment stands at 23.1 per cent. See Statistics South Africa, Community Survey, Basic Results: Municipalities’ (Pretoria, Statistics South Africa, 2008), p. v. The difference between ‘official’ and ‘unofficial’ indicators is that the former includes only those who were searching for employment up to seven days before the most recent census. The latter expands this to include those who had been searching for employment for the four weeks prior to the most recent census.

Public–private partnerships in the water and sanitation sector

Following the growth, employment and redistribution (GEAR) programme in June 1996, South Africa saw an acceleration in the privatisation of service delivery. This paper reports on a study of two longer-term public–private partnerships (PPPs) in the water and sanitation sector undertaken in Queenstown and Dolphin Coast. The case studies offer important insights into a number of factors that determine the effectiveness of PPPs, including quality and quantity of services, workers, municipal tariffs for water and sanitation, customer management and impact on the poor. The case study findings are used to assess the general risks to main stakeholders involved in PPPs (the concessionaire, council and community) and to provide universal lessons on the conditions under which PPPs in the water and sanitation sector work best.

Challenging Hegemony: social movements and the quest for a new humanism in post-apartheid South Africa (review)

Reviewed by: Challenging Hegemony: social movements and the quest for a new humanism in post-apartheid South Africa Elke Zuern (bio) Nigel Gibson (ed) (2006) Challenging Hegemony: social movements and the quest for a new humanism in post-apartheid South Africa. Trenton, NJ and Asmara, Ethiopia:Africa World Press. The challenge in capturing the complexities of contentious politics is to demonstrate the common structural factors that help to explain stark inequality and marginalisation without discounting the agency of individuals and communities to respond; it is also to demonstrate the similarities between diverse actions without homogenising a very heterogeneous and contentious field of movement politics. Challenging Hegemony sets out to do this. The authors broadly define the influence of neo-liberal economic politics internationally and the ANC's dominance domestically and lay out the theoretical and empirical implications of this hegemony. Radical social movements provide the clearest challenge to this hegemony, but their role is neither automatic nor uncomplicated by debates and divisions. In order to balance the power of hegemony with the politics of resistance and the development of alternative frameworks, the contributors to this volume demonstrate the dialectical relationships at play. This is difficult to do while still providing a clear analysis, but the book as a whole does a commendable job in working to meet this challenge. The neo-liberal economic policies of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund as well as those of the South African government since the introduction of the Growth Employment and Redistribution (GEAR) framework, broadly define the economic and social paradigm that the authors seek to challenge. Neocosmos, 'Rethinking Politics in Southern Africa Today: elements of a critique of political liberalism', Bond, [End Page 152] 'Johannesburg's resurgent social movements', and Mngxitama, 'National Land Committee, 1994-2004: a critical insider's perspective', most directly work to define the functioning of this hegemonic system, respectively focusing on the power of 'Western, state-dominated, (neo-) liberal political thought' (55), 'Johannesburg's neo-liberal municipal restructuring' (105) and the politics and false promises of NGOs. Neocosmos argues that on the African continent both neo-liberalism and state nationalism 'are founded on liberal precepts and are fundamentally authoritarian' (59). He adds that the technocratic language of state development works to exclude the very people in whose name development is meant to be achieved. Neocosmos concludes: 'Democracy cannot emanate from the state (nor can it be defined by state logic), but only from altering relations between state and society as a result of political prescriptions emanating from society itself' (92). Bond offers a closer look at the human impact of the restructuring of service delivery in Johannesburg and the sharp disconnections not only between what people need and what they receive but also between what the state promises during election campaigns and what is actually available to citizens in practice. This overview outlines the stark marginalisation that ordinary people face, the motivation for a number of radical movements and the incredible challenges they face in bringing about real change. Mngxitama's analysis complements Bond's arguments by demonstrating the lack of focused attention to land restitution and reallocation and the incredible inequities that the current system maintains. Here Mngxitama demonstrates the controversial and difficult role played by NGOs which he argues, despite partial victories, work to limit real transformation. He points to two 'very seductive discourses which helped to maintain the fidelity of organs of civil society such as NGOs to the new state: "National Liberation" and "Developmentalism"' (176) thereby lending support to a number of central arguments made by Neocosmos in his chapter. Mngxitama clearly demonstrates how the National Land Committee (NLC) was trapped both by its early liberal politics and by its later partnership with the state into supporting policies that unfortunately have not worked to empower those most affected by land dispossession, such as farm workers. These three chapters offer a number of the book's central critiques of liberalism and the liberal tradition. Together with the remaining chapters, they effectively work to demonstrate the shortcomings of a purely rights based approach and the ways in which working through the existing system often reproduces fundamental inequities and limits the construction of true alternatives. This...

Economic Growth, Employment, Labour Productivity and Remuneration in South Africa: Evidence from Published Financial Data

This paper examines the changes which took place in a population of companies within the formal sector of the South African economy vis-à-vis economic growth, employment, labour productivity and remuneration and also compares these changes with projections put forward in the Growth, Employment and Redistribution (GEAR) policy. GEAR projected that an economic growth rate of 6% per annum would give rise to the creation of 400 000 additional jobs per year in the formal sector over the period 1996 to 2000.The data used in the study was gathered from the annual financial statements of 62 industrial companies listed on the JSE Securities Exchange over the period 1994 to 2000.Although it appeared as though labour productivity had increased, the increase was partly due to an overall decrease in employment, rather than a greater than expected increase in value added. It emerged that the majority of companies, which decreased employment, contributed negatively to economic growth. These companies were also shown to have increased salaries on a per employee basis, which meant that these companies did not reduce their overall salary expenses substantially. By decreasing employee numbers and increasing per capita remuneration, the companies in question only acted to further increase an already wide income differential in South Africa. It thus appeared that in reality few of the projections put forward in GEAR were achieved by these companies.

Poverty, human rights law and socio-economic realities in South Africa†

South Africa is a nation of immense variety. It has rich cultural diversity, an enviable climate and an abundance of natural resources. However, it is also a nation with vast economic disparities and a highly unequal distribution of income. Hence, in spite of abundant resources and a seemingly vibrant economy, South Africa still faces an enormous poverty problem that is fundamentally no different from that of other African countries. As in many other African countries this problem of poverty is compounded by the HIV/AIDS pandemic; by high levels of unemployment; by low levels of education; and by a number of other factors. Today, South Africa has one of the best constitutions in the world and a Bill of Rights that contains an array of justiciable socio-economic rights. The South African government has also attempted to alleviate poverty and mitigate its effects through progressively developing and expanding a social welfare system and other programmes such as the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) and the Growth, Employment and Redistribution (GEAR) strategy. The purpose of this article is to analyse the role of human rights (specifically the Bill of Rights in the Constitution) and government efforts to alleviate poverty (through certain programmes and service delivery) in the face of adverse socio-economic realities in South Africa. † The research findings discussed in this article are part of a larger research project, funded by the South African National Research Foundation (NRF). The aim of the project was to determine the level of public awareness and perceptions regarding human rights protection in South Africa. An earlier version of this article was presented as a paper at the Law and Poverty Workshop organised by the Comparative Research Programme on Poverty (CROP) and the Social Science Academy of Nigeria, held in Abuja, Nigeria, 24–26 November 2003.

Social justice and post-apartheid development planning: Reflections on moral progress in South Africa

This article focuses on South Africa's macro-development strategy through the lens of social justice theory. The two key post-apartheid development planning frameworks, the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) and the Growth, Employment and Redistribution (GEAR) macro-economic development strategy, are reviewed and their outcomes are assessed in terms of social justice theory. It is argued that while RDP was a strategy that had distinctive Rawlsian social justice characteristics, the implementation of the neoliberal GEAR strategy has led to certain outcomes, particularly the deepening of poverty and a rise in income inequality, which cannot be seen as consistent with mainstream social justice theorisation. However, the fact that, under GEAR, RDP objectives in terms of a broadly defined 'social wage' have been maintained, makes it less feasible to reach the simplistic conclusion that South Africa under the GEAR policy framework is not making strides towards being a more socially just society. Thi...

Tom Lodge. Politics in South Africa: From Mandela to Mbeki. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003. vi + 314 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $19.95. Paper. - Gillian Hart. Disabling Globalization: Places of Power in Post-Apartheid South Africa. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002. xi + 385 pp. Appendix. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $21.95. Paper.

Tom Lodge. Politics in South Africa: From Mandela to Mbeki. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003. vi + 314 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $19.95. Paper. - Gillian Hart. Disabling Globalization: Places of Power in Post-Apartheid South Africa. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002. xi + 385 pp. Appendix. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $21.95. Paper. - Volume 47 Issue 2

Gillian Hart, Disabling Globalization: Places of Power in Post-Apartheid South Africa. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002.

Dominant understandings of globalization, according to Gillian Hart, are “disabling.” By measuring the effect of the “global” on the “local,” conventional impact studies rely on a flawed conceptual opposition of time and space: the “global” is temporal and dynamic, the “local” spatial and static (12–13). This drives the lament, heard in post-apartheid government circles, that “there is no alternative” to the pro-globalization policies adopted when the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) was displaced in June 1996 by a plan known as Growth, Employment and Redistribution (GEAR). “The central premise of GEAR was that an orthodox neoliberal package—tight fiscal austerity, monetary discipline, wage restraints, reducing corporate taxes, trade liberalization, and phasing out exchange controls—would lure investment . . . unleash rapid growth, tighten labor markets, and drive up wages” (20). A few years later, poverty had grown among the poorest and unemployment remained high.

On the fault-line: The politics of AIDS policy in contemporary South Africa

In a context where the state has had the power to implement major policy initiatives such as the macro-economic Growth Employment and Redistribution (GEAR) strategy why has conflict around AIDS policy persisted as high politics? What explains the apparent inability of the state to exercise effective leadership and deal decisively with AIDS the particular strategies it has adopted in relation to AIDS activists and scientists and the ability of these activists and scientists to apply ongoing pressure and even precipitate a political crisis at the centre of power in the new state? This paper attempts to answer these questions through a closer examination of the various responses to AIDS in South Africa as a distinct set of social relations within the post-apartheid landscape. The particularity of the AIDS world or field is partly explained by the emergence of a fatal disease that has crossed and generated responses that cross many conventional social boundaries involving a wide variety of actors; and partly by the fact that it has spawned both local and global social movements. (excerpt)

South Africa’s form of globalisation: a continental posture paradox for insertion and dependence

Abstract The fashionable form of globalisation has perpetuated Africa’s incapacity for auto-centeredness. As promises of political and economic reforms did not materialize and as economically powerful states continued to be indifferent, most African states resorted to the strategy of self-interest for international legitimacy and faith in foreign direct investment (FDI) and aid. Departing from its portrayal as a relatively developed, competitive and civil-minded state in Africa, South Africa reinvented modernity in the hope of servicing similar self-interests. I argue that South Africa’s form of globalisation is paradoxical. While positing as a voice for the voiceless and leader of African renaissance, that country simultaneously mediated Africa’s relations for appropriation of neo-liberal principles. Occurring predominantly through political and economic liberalisation, globalisation of Africa is ‘an old story’ of insertion for dependence on foreign capital. I show that South Africa’s neo-liberal agenda in Growth, Employment and Redistribution (GEAR), as well, engendered openness to imports. Given the commonalities between GEAR and the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), I argue that the latter is South Africa’s instrument of ‘reintegrating’ Africa. I also illustrate that South Africa’s foreign economic policy in Africa and NEPAD are founded on the marginalisation thesis, misreading of the paradoxical operations of neo-orthodoxy globalisation in Africa and the thinking that South Africa is suffering due to its geographical association with Africa. I conclude that that country’s form of globalisation will further empty Africa of its capacity of auto-centeredness and engender openness to imports, which are yet to deliver continental recovery.

South Africa in GEAR: `A better life for all' or a zero-sum game of globalization?

State conduct of commerce with the rest of the world has always been important, rather than determinant, to domestic capacity to generate and distribute output and income. Theoretically, engagements of world commerce have included protectionism, inward-looking strategies, integration for interdependence, insertion for dependence, openness to imports and free trade regimes. For erstwhile colonies in Africa, the trajectory of engagement has seemed to be predetermined due to colonial-formation of their economies. As the model of evolution of Africa's external relations demonstrates, states in that continent have been inserted into the global system for dependent extraversion and adjustments. Attempts at trade and market liberalisation there have perpetuated openness to imports. Given that state of affairs, states in that continent have been eroded of capacity of domesticating globalisation for local socio-economic transformation. From a political-economy perspective, the paper views South Africa's Growth, Employment and Redistribution (GEAR) strategy as an instrument of appropriation that is set to perpetuate that country's dependent extraversion and openness to imports. The paper uses the balance of payments to demonstrate that country's poor state of commerce with the rest of the world. It argues that as external trade and capital flows and investments, which are shaped through domestic economic policy, affect in return domestic capacity of transforming the structures of deprivation, GEAR has inaugurated a zero-sum game of globalisation, rather than `a better life for all'. We analyse several indicators of economic performance and social wellbeing to demonstrate the paradoxical operations and Janus-faced tendencies of globalisation and the attendant lack of transformation of structures of deprivation in South Africa.