SOUTH AFRICA AND THE UNFOLDING REALITIES OF ECONOMIC MANAGEMENT: TWENTY YEARS AFTER DEMOCRACY, FREEDOM AND TRANSITION

Abstract

This paper attempts to place in perspective the issues and realities of South African economic challenges and imperatives nearly twenty years after democracy, freedom and transition. To this end the work of Khalid Ikram is acknowledged in respect to the ideas and synthesis utilized in this paper. His work was portrayed in a book Egypt: Economic Management in a Period of Transition (A World Bank Country Economic Report, 1980). The idea of framing this article is based on the similarities that confront South Africa some 33 years after Egypt had undergone its own transition and economic emancipation. There is no doubt that South Africa has made some great strides in assembling economic intervention strategies in two decades of its freedom from the yoke of apartheid oppression. It still has a long journey to undertake in respect of its transition and emancipation from the legacy of apartheid.