DAVID MAYNIER: Reform is killing recovery
Cyril Ramaphosa looked exhausted last week as he announced his new stimulus plan. Who wouldn’t be, trying to juggle reform and recovery?
All of us remember the sense of renewal, revitalisation and progress following President Cyril Ramaphosa’s election, and the "new path" of economic growth, employment and transformation. However, within just six months the veneer of Ramaphosa as the master negotiator, who plays the long game and who has everything under control, so popular in business circles, was shattered as the economy slipped into recession. Writing to President Franklin D Roosevelt during the Great Depression, John Maynard Keynes warned that he was engaged in a "double task" of recovery and reform, and that even "wise and necessary" reform could "impede and complicate" recovery. Well, that is exactly what has happened as the "double task" of reform and recovery has been bungled, with reform being allowed to impede and complicate recovery in SA. We do need a debate on land reform, and we do need to right what was a terrible wrong, but triggering a debate about land reform without compensation now was a mistake b...
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