STATE POLICY
Erasing know-how and creating fictional enemies will not save SA
’White monopoly capital’ may sound politically alluring but it merely diverts attention from real challenges, writes Ann Bernstein
By depicting existing companies with their know-how and capabilities as the enemies of its people, SA risks making a historically calamitous mistake, says Ricardo Hausmann, one of the world’s leading experts on what drives economic growth, especially in developing countries. A former minister of national planning in Venezuela, Hausmann is now director of the Center for International Development, part of Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. Between 2006 and 2008, he led a group of 28 local and international economists advising SA’s government on the economic policies needed to unlock the "binding constraints" on faster economic growth. The resulting reports are among the most rigorous and compelling analyses of SA’s economic challenges, though most of their recommendations have not been implemented. He was in SA earlier in 2017 at the invitation of the Centre for Development and Enterprise, giving a series of lectures to various audiences. This is a distillation of some...
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