POVERTY RELIEF
Exports rather than redistribution are key to prospects for SA’s growth
Having recently acknowledged that cracking down on corruption and patronage appointments is necessary but insufficient to spur meaningful growth, SA must now unravel how it creates its own limitations. Two pervasive beliefs preclude adequate growth. Policies presume domestic wealth and purchasing power can fuel broad prosperity. Another erroneous belief is that enormous workforce upskilling must precede sustained high growth. With more than half the voters entrenched in suffocating poverty, the politics of redistribution are irresistible. Yet redistribution policies conflict with expanding exports. Thus, routinely prioritising redistribution ahead of exporting at each policy juncture has greatly dimmed growth prospects. While SA’s mineral wealth is enormous, its constitutionally mandated social obligations arising from pervasive poverty are greater still, and they are compounding insidiously. Thus SA’s debt has been rated junk despite moderate debt relative to GDP. This ratio climbi...
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