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Development Economics and Perspectives on the South African Economy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 April 2015

Extract

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
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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7. It is important in this economic methodology to distinguish between “problems” in the sense of something being wrong with peoples' lives related to living and working conditions and “problems” in the sense of systemic social or economic factors that injure people. For example, low profits or wages may be an individual problem; low investment, devaluation, or inflation may not be conceived of by the individual as a problem, although they may cause low profits or wages. If cause and effect are confused, solutions may be devised to “solve” the presumed cause of a problem without testing their pertinence as, for instance, when certain Third World countries labelled slow growth as the main economic problem and oriented their policies toward growth as the cure for poverty.

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10. As Leff notes about Richard Posner's work, this tendency makes the work of leading neo-classical analysts and IMF reports resemble a picaresque novel:

Think of the great ones, Tom Jones, for instance, or Huckleberry Finn, or Don Quixote. In each case the eponymous hero sets out into a world of complexity and brings to bear on successive segments of it the power of his own particular personal vision. The world presents itself as a series of problems; to each problem that vision acts as a form of solution; and the problem having been dispatched, our hero passes on to the next adventure. The particular interactions are essentially invariant because the central vision is single. No matter what comes up or comes by, Tom's sensual vigor, Huck's cynical innocence, or the Don's aggressive romaticism is brought into play, forever to transform the picture of the pictured world (without, by the way, except in extremis, transforming the hero).

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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20. Id. at 48-49.

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23. Id.

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25. Stadler, supra note 15.

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34. Id. at 96-97.

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36. Lipton, supra note 1, at 253.

37. Business International, supra note 27, at 82.

38. Id. at 88.

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41. A view shared by Business International, supra note 27, at 93-94.

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43. See Business International, supra note 27, at 83, 87; Horwitz, supra note 30, at 196, 251.

44. See discussions of Iscor in Horwitz, supra note 30, at 252-53.

45. Business International, supra note 27, at 87.

46. Id.

47. Country Profile 1986/87, supra note 14, at 22.

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50. Bromberger, supra note 30, at 63.

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.

63. Brand, The Development Task, in Thomas, supra note 1, at 53 [hereinafter Brand].

64. van Zyl, supra note 18, at 67.

65. Simkins, supra note 48, at 19-20; see also Lombard, , On Economic Liberalism in South Africa, Bureau for Economic Policy and Analysis, University of Pretoria 11 (1979) [hereinafter Lombard]Google Scholar.

66. Simkins, supra note 48, at 15.

67. Id. at 17.

68. Lipton, supra note 1, at 12.

69. Kantor and Rees, supra note 48, at 36.

70. Brand, supra note 63, at 53.

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

72. Id.

73. See Country Profile 1986/87, supra note 14, at 21-22; Country Profile 1987, supra note 21, at 19.

74. Dickman, supra note 18, at 60.

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

82. Keenan and Sarak, supra note 77, at 114-17; see also Ndaba, Malnutrition in Children in South Africa [hereinafter Ndaba], in Second Carnegie Inquiry, supra note 76, No. 278.

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.

86. Tollman, supra note 76, at 6.

87. Nattrass, supra note 1, at 95.

88. Id. at 29.

89. Id. at 99.

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

91. Nattrass, supra note 1, at 112-13.

92. Id. at 162-63.

93. Rupert, supra note 30, at 97.

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96. See Country Profile 1986/87, supra note 14, at 39.

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98. Nattrass, supra note 1, at 31.

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107. Nassim, Education and Poverty: Some Perspectives, Second Carnegie Inquiry, supra note 76, No. 94, at 30.

108. Nattrass, supra note 1, at 291-92.

109. Id. at 31.

110. Id. at 122.

111. Leatt, supra note 1, at 27.

112. Nattrass, supra note 1, at 66.

113. Id. at 116.

114. Id. at 117.

115. Id. at 96.

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118. Black and Stanwix, supra note 16, at 20-21.

119. Id. at 56-57.

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.

121. Keenan and Sarak, supra note 77, at 114.

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127. Id. at 308.

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.

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

134. Nbada, supra note 82, at 17-20.

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.

141. Black and Stanwix, supra note 16, at 45.

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154. Id. at 41.

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161. Davies, supra note 1, at 89-90.

162. Motlatsi, supra note 152, at 42.

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

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166. Marks and Rathbone, supra note 158, at 6.

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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.