Will a generation be doomed by misguided efforts to protect the vulnerable? Or will we escape this surreal nightmare by dispatching delusions? Our politics have always blocked what today’s crisis must provide: policies to spur sustained high growth. A lockdown buys time; it doesn’t directly save lives. Yet South Africa’s capacity to buy time is…Continue reading Protecting the vulnerable while fixing the economy

The wilfully blind government has entrenched stagnation by favouring redistribution legislation 29 MARCH 2020 We must follow our president’s example. Declaring a national lockdown required intellectual fortitude. Just last month President Cyril Ramaphosa was punting the fantasy of a sovereign wealth fund. We the people must also dispatch our delusions. The country’s sovereign debt, along…Continue reading Sustained high growth requires SA to flip policy on its head

Policymakers globally accept the need for sufficient isolation to slow the spread so that medical capacities are not overwhelmed 23 MARCH 2020 For SA to meet its sovereign debt obligations fully elected leaders would have to take reckless chances and then get very lucky. To manage the Covid-19 crisis and its aftermath prudently, the challenges…Continue reading Shutting public transport is among steps SA should take to beat Covid-19

the President is simply not powerful enough to push through reform None of our elites can articulate a politically navigable plan to grow the economy. President Ramaphosa’s SONA speech and initial support for COSATU’s unhelpful ideas regarding Eskom and infrastructure spending show they have stopped trying.  Successful infrastructure investing must be guided by a commercially…Continue reading Ramaphosa has given up on fixing the economy

The preamble demands that everyone’s potential be freed, but the ANC lacks a proper high-growth plan to make this possible Why have none of SA’s leaders been able to articulate a commercially robust and politically saleable growth plan? For such a plan to be effective, in addition to being economically potent, it must help the…Continue reading Making citizens wards of the state clashes with the constitution

While apartheid is dead the outdated feudal system keeps the country’s poor dependent on the governing party Discovering it could defang critics with one word, the ANC institutionalised the term “inequality”, and most people now emphasise it when describing SA’s economy. Whereas the top policy objective of the past 25 years needed to be growth…Continue reading Focus on inequality distracts ANC from tackling the real issues

Efforts to reduce poverty after apartheid have relied heavily on transfer payments and quotas The political opportunism that entrenches the government’s bloated wage bill explains policymakers’ inability to advance broad prosperity. Analysing why SA’s successive governing parties have exploited dependencies will make inclusive growth policies less elusive. Confronting the government’s wage bill confirms, again, that…Continue reading Focus on dependencies has led to bloated state payroll and failure to grow prosperity

Neither a national election nor its aftermath have produced a workable growth plan despite poverty and unemployment rising to politically combustible levels — as fiscal capacity to mitigate hardships contracts. Might an official opposition party sensitive to, but not subservient to, racial politics be just what the country needs? Might the most plausible path towards…Continue reading Realigned DA could lead the way to prosperity as ANC overdoses on transformation