Search results for ""Institute for African Alternatives and the Africa Institite""

In tracing the economic debates in the ANC from the Freedom Charter and Morogoro to the RDP and the present, this analytical overview shows that the shift to macro-economic stabilisation in the transition to democracy in 1994 was due to international pressure, and examines how it changed the trajectory of ANC policies. The government became frozen in the pursuit of cautious economic policies in the interests of fiscal prudence. The commitment to development lost momentum, compensated partially by the provision of modest social services and social grants. The revolt against economic orthodoxy at the ANC Polokwane conference which was pressed forward at the Tripartite Economic Summit in 2008 is traced, and the economic challenges that will face the new government in 2009 are analysed with original insights into what should be done to address the economic crisis. A framework for alternative development programmes based on a change of mindset about the centrality of development planning in a pro-people developmental state is set out. The analysis is based on 15 years' work in parliament and in economic committees of the ANC, which provided unequalled access to vast documentation and discussions with the top policy-makers of the ANC and government. Included are an extensive examination of the international conditions during the transition in 1994, the creation of the RDP, the switch to GEAR, the distortions of BEE, the dual economy, the lessons from Africa, and the reasons why the productive sectors of the economy have stalled. In conclusion, the decisions of the Tripartite Economic Summit and the proposed changes to government policies are assessed.

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No matter how strongly the IMF and World Bank advise that a country's salvation lies in economic growth, experience in developing countries is that wealth does not trickle down. When growth comes from the developed sector of the economy, it benefits the rich and simply does not reach the poor majority. Conditions in South Africa show the same outcome. Fourteen years after the ANC came to power; the South African unemployment rate of 24 percent is more than twice that of the next country on the list compiled by the Economist. Poverty is so prevalent that welfare grants are a desperate remedy in this "budget surplus" economy. No One denies that inequality is rising. All of this flies in the face of the Freedom Charter's declaration that sharing would be the guiding principle for a democratic South Africa. This title is the result of a high level seminar convened to draw together the threads of a vigorous national debate on the role of the State in socio-economic development. Hosted by the Minister of Provincial and Local Government, it was attended by top leaders and officials of the State, Parastatal Development Organizations and Academic Institutions. Although the prominence of the "developmental state" idea at the ANC policy and national conferences of 2007 has been met with concern in business circles as a "victory of the left", the papers here make a case that rests fat more.

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