TIM COHEN: A tale of two countries: how Namibia is slipping its neighbourly bonds
The country seems to be charting its own path away from the more dominant SA
As tricky a topic as it may be, I enjoy reading national comparisons from an economic perspective. It’s a rather arcane and geeky topic, I would admit. But it’s also enormously instructive. National comparisons may be inexact, but they provide the only real way to compare policy choices. Consider, for example, the split between the two sides of Germany and the two sides of Korea. In a sense, this is like twin studies in psychology. If you think about it, it almost creepily resembles a preconstructed scientific study: let’s take two countries on opposite sides of the world, divide one east-west, the other north-south, institute different economic policies in each half, and see what happens. What happened was so obvious that only the ANC and a few other political parties around the world have failed to notice: capitalism works, socialism doesn’t. In the broadest terms, it’s as simple as that. Still, this is just a broad-stroke example. What about something more complicated? The best l...
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