TIM COHEN: Reserve Bank debate reflects ideological balance of forces in the ANC
Jacob Zuma disciples have dragged the issue into their exclusivist campaign — and the figures show this policy just doesn’t work
There are some debates in SA that just won’t go away. The independence of the Reserve Bank is one of them. I have to say, it’s with a heavy hand that I broach the topic yet again. How long has this debate been going round and round? Frankly, it’s exhausting, and borders on the vapid. But there is one aspect of the current debate that is significant, and that is what it says about the ideological balance of forces raging within the ANC. The short history of the party’s economic policy is that until 2009 it favoured a broadly inclusive policy, positioning itself as an economic mediator between the maelstrom of pressures in SA’s cleaved society. That began to change with the presidency of Thabo Mbeki, becoming an exclusive policy in which the ANC saw itself as a hero of economic development, planning centrally how the economy would function and designating winners and losers. Under former president Jacob Zuma, this exclusive economic policy was massively extended, racialised and corpor...
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