James Bond was also one of the many campaigners that cut off funds to our previous government. Comparing our current situation to the “Swart Gevaar” period is in my opinion a bit unfair… on the Afrikaaners that is. They did better in international terms with very negative intervention from the IMF, World Bank, King Commission and their international trading partners. Whatever we may think of their policies, they kept the economy going under very arduous conditions.

Enough on the Bond’s, James Bond, John Bond and the Broeder Bond.

Natal University had a very interesting computer model of the South African Economy in 2000. It wasn’t particularly accurate but it did give an interesting insight to the interrelationship of the different aspects. I wonder what happened to it.

Good point Ebrahim but let’s also be clear ‘what this market is’ – it too can be a very vague and nefarious concept. I think the way to look at it is to see it has a set of rules that frame the mechanisms of economic exchange – the exchange of labour, natural resources, the production of goods, and exchange of goods of value like property, knowledge and money between actors. The characteristics of these rules would determine which economic actor involving in the exchange of economic value benefits the most – is it the state, the big company, the work or some other entity, including the environment by the way. If, market rules give more power to some actors over others they eventually can change the rules of the game to their advantage until they encounter a new interest or force that tries to re-balance or reform the rules of the game. markets are contest between different forces of economic exchange trying to mediate the best outcome or interest in theor favour. Well, this is my simpleton’s defintion of markets.

1. Extent of privatization in the country-
2. Exchange controls and repatriation policy-
3. Taxation regime..
4. Degree of state intervention in the economy-
5. The nature of the market
6. Trade policy and WTO…
7. Monetary policy…
8. Nature of private sector vs state enterprises…
9. Intellectual property law..
10. State budgeting and allocations…
11. Poverty programmes and grants…

And, then are many more. You then have to compare this with another neoliberal country of your choice and another emerging economy – let’s say Brazil.

I guarantee you will find out how hard it is to make such a comparison and how different every country’s economic policies are that no one country satisfies the label as a straight-jacket. I think this whole neo-liberal word is just rubbish. It obfuscates the important issue – the link between growth and redistribution/the link between ownership and participation in the economy/ the link between wealth creation and income patterns/ the difference between a parasitic state and a caring state etc.

Giving an economy a label in your philosophically abstract and ungrounded way is just playing with words. Even a Communist/socialist country which in ideological terms is not neo-liberal can well depict the same economic disparities as a neo-liberal economy simply on the basis of an understanding of how wealth is distributed and how the state interventions in the overall welfare of its citizens.

I challenge you Prof because I don’t want you to be stuck with erroneous catchy labels because they can often deny reality or an understanding of reality. I think as Steven Friedman once wrote on his blog and it applies to the word neo-liberal – you must throw away that word neo-liberal like one needs to throw away that word globalisation. Free you great philosophical mind and think deep and not abstractly.

No I was not comparing SA to world growth. I was comparing SA growth to our own growth pre-1994 – there was definite stagnation in the economy from 1980-1995.It was Swaart Gevaar time. I am also wondering what is the point you trying to make with the comparison to world growth – we a long way from achieving those scales.

My view is that infrastructure led growth must be built on ‘real’ productive activity in order for the infrastructure to be paid off and make a return for what is invested. ASGISA at present may lead to huge sunk cost in infrastructure with no simultaneous production growth- so we spending money on infrastucture but no productive capacity of a scale that will use the investment made. Or maybe it is a chicken and egg situation. But in my book growth in production should provide the cue for infrastructure growth. But it is a difficult one this. I am wondering for instance if Eskom doubles its capacity to 80 000MW spending the R200bn it has will all that power be used.

If, it doesn’t then we will have surplus power and create a lot of white elephants and whose benefits accrue to high-powered wheelers and dealers who are busy signing up lucrative contracts for their friends and family. Including Chancellor House of the ANC.

I suppose you right I shouldn’t use the word unprecedented but rather say the late 1990s was better than the 1980s.

The Economist has an intelligence unit and the World Bank and IFC have fairly good statistics. Maybe Ebrahim can tell you more. You are right about the international benchmark. I don’t dispute that.

Hey Ebrahim – you should read Veblen’s great work Theory of the Leisure Class and his theory of corporations. Subsequent person who has borrowed themes from this work is Kenneth Gailbraith – The Affluent Society.

I agree with everything you’ve written here, and most places elsewhere on Thought Leader except the REAL GROWTH issue. Please redirect me to a site, a reputable site showing a year’s growth that is greater than half the average for Resource Rich Emerging Economies.

Or if you can’t do that, show me one set of statistics where we have equalled the average growth of the world economy.

Continuously talking about unprecedented growth when the world is growing so much faster is very dangerous. We rest on our laurels.

I am reminded of meeting a Ugandan Minister in about 2000. I congratulated him on Uganda’s twelve and a half percent growth in the previous year. His amusing comment was “Yes it was good but twelve and a half percent of nothing is still nothing…” He then gave me an interesting discussion on how a country cannot afford to slip in the world economy because it is so difficult to catch up.

Oh and I was around when the 65/69 boom took place (9 to 15% annually) – Did you say something about unprecedented growth…