IF YOU ask people in government, or in the ANC why SA’s growth rate has been so miserable over the past decade, they will tend to posit three reasons: the 2008 financial crisis, the cooling commodity boom because of the declining rate of growth in China, and the country’s apartheid legacy.There is a one-word refutation of this construction: Namibia.Namibia is an extraordinary place, and an increasingly notable African success story. I know it a little because my parents lived there for a few years, and I have travelled the country from top to bottom.But it is interesting from a South African perspective because of its facility as a point of comparison.It must be said that the comparison between the two countries is weak in some ways: Namibia is a huge country with a very small population; its geography is different, with most of the country a brutal desert; and population density in Namibia is focused on the country’s fertile and semi-tropical extreme north.But in other ways, the co...
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