SA should consider abandoning its modest growth ambitions and pursue a transformative economic expansion of 8%-14% annually, said businessperson and conservationist Jonathan Oppenheimer.
Oppenheimer argues the country has the capacity to unlock a surge in jobs, capital and investment if it reforms its economic environment aggressively.
Speaking to Business Day on the sidelines of the SA Future Trust Summit, Oppenheimer, who is also the executive chairperson of the SA Future Trust, dismissed the government’s medium-term target of about 3% growth as timid and insufficient for a nation with mass unemployment and underutilised industrial potential.
“I believe SA should be targeting 8%-14% growth,” he said, adding that “10% we could do in our sleep” if constraints were removed.
“But 3% presumes everything else stays the same. All the constraints that exist today remain. Why do those constraints have to exist?”
The growth target was endorsed in 2024 by the government and organised business shortly after the establishment of the GNU. It is based on a set of reforms outlined in the second phase of Operation Vulindlela, which, if successfully implemented, is expected to add 130,000 jobs yearly (job growth rises 2.1% a year) and 2.68-million by 2029.
The economy is forecast to expand less than 1% this year by the SA Reserve Bank and international lenders. Power supply improvements and logistics interventions have brought some relief but private-sector investment remains subdued amid policy uncertainty, slow regulatory decisions and weak confidence
Oppenheimer, a former executive at Anglo American and De Beers, argues that the country’s real bottleneck is not labour or entrepreneurial energy, but a policy environment that fails to reward capital.
“Growth is limited by access to capital, and growth is limited by access to labour. We have an abundance of labour…. What we don’t have an abundance of is capital.”
Empowering small businesses
Part of the remedy for low growth was empowering small businesses and cutting the red tape that slowed them down.
“The most precious commodity that small businesses have in doing their business is time. And so … my strongest argument when I talk with the government is you have to give small businesses back time,” he said.
“The SA government has a lot of programmes which are very pro small business. We have a ministry for the small business…. This is signalling that we really want to help them. But if you want to access government capital for small businesses, how long does it take?”
Infrastructure investment was the fastest path to rapid expansion. “The necessary infrastructure build … is worth 3%-5% of growth alone,” he said, describing rail, ports, roads and housing as the foundations of a high-growth cycle.
We need to drive the speed of decision-making.
— Jonathan Oppenheimer
If SA built at pace and reduced capital costs, the country could unleash capital flows currently sitting idle, he said.
“The SA government needs to work diligently to absolutely protect its people and … our environment. And as importantly, make SA a more attractive place for capital. We need to be closer to Morocco than to the UK in all our legislation,” he said.
“We need to drive the speed of decision-making. We need to drive to clarity and decision-making. We need to drive to understanding that capital needs to return for capital to come. And it doesn’t matter if it’s domestic capital or foreign capital; we need the capital in the ground to build goods and services for our people. The more goods and services we build, the happier our people will be.”
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