South Africa has achieved much to the great benefit of the broad population since 1994. However, since the start of the financial crisis, which also coincided with a change of leadership within the ANC, all is not well economically. Much can be blamed on specific factors such as weak international demand and the end of the super cycle in commodities but there is no doubt that domestic policy choices have played a significant role. This book, argues that we are currently endangering the very foundations of modern south Africa namely the supremacy of individual rights as enshrined in our constitution. Economic growth for sustainable transformation is urgently required. The unbridled free market or traditional laissez-faire economics will not provide this growth, but nor will state planning. The author argues that ONLY a system based on the absolute equality of individuals, governed by the independent rule of law and guided by market forces can achieve this. The current interventionist stance of government and the concept of the developmental state is not new in the world nor will it succeed. The state has a pivotal role to play in addressing the structural and historic inequality in the country, but must guard against unintended consequences flowing from actions that inhibit market mechanisms. If anything, the logic contained in the book shows how current state planning might inadvertently, but surely, lead to the very erosion of the freedom that so many people fought for without delivering the goods as promised. Our good intentions will grind us to a halt.
About the Author: Cobus Venter is a senior consulting economist at the bureau for economic research at stellenbosch university where he heads up the macro services and ad hoc research division. Prior to working for the university he worked as an independent consulting economist and was also an executive director at the leading regulatory specialist consulting firm ECONEX. During his time as an economist he has consulted widely across just about all sectors of the South African economy. He has worked in various fields in the private sector, mostly as a self-employed entrepreneur, but spent more than a decade in the hotel and property trade. He is a director of Happimo.org which is described as a non-profit organisation dedicated to giving all south Africans, rich or poor, access to cutting-edge technology that can help them live safer, healthier and smarter lives. His favorite pastime is watching the growing success of Project Isizwe which delivers free WiFi to millions of South Africans so that they are better able to make informed decisions about their lives... and a bit of fishing. He re-joined the economics profession in 2008 just in time for the great financial crisis and has been trying to make sense of the world and the country ever since. He grew up in Johannesburg but now lives in Stellenbosch with his wife and three young sons.