Your editorial (“Don’t mistake blip for breakthrough”, December 5) correctly warns that only credible reforms will unlock the scale of investment South Africa needs to achieve sustained growth.
At about 14% of GDP South Africa’s rate of investment stands at less than half of its middle-income peers, while it even manages to lag behind the aggregates for high- and low-income countries.
As we have argued during the year in our “Blueprint for Growth” reports, it owes much to the country’s policy choices.
In public administration these have placed political affiliation and demographic representativity over professionalism; in the labour market, the country has failed to provide solid skills pipelines, while driving up labour costs; and in the economy as a whole empowerment policy has imposed enormous disincentives.
The official response has been to try to “explain” things, an expression of a dogged unwillingness to rethink courses of action that have demonstrably failed. Call this “fake transformation”.
You are correct that we need projects and not press releases, but to get there we need an honest appraisal of the political and ideological impulses behind our economic malaise. Fortunately, choices can also be unmade — if there’s the will to do so.
Terence Corrigan
Institute of Race Relations
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