Pathways through financial crisis: South Africa

Global Governance

Volumn 12, Issue 4, 2006, Pages 431-448

  Rustomjee, Cyrus ^a,b,c,d  

^a Financial Services Board

^b Policy Board for Financial Services and Regulation   (South Africa)

^c UNIVERSITY OF KWAZULU NATAL   (South Africa)

^d Centre for Economic Training in Africa

Author keywords

Apartheid; Contagion; Development; Financial crisis; International Monetary Fund; Reconstruction; Reconstruction and development program; South Africa

Indexed keywords

EID: 33845756263     PISSN: 10752846     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1163/19426720-01204007     Document Type: Review

References (22)

1. Ashwin Desai, We Are the Poors: Community Struggles in Post-Apartheid South Africa (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2002);
2. Patrick Bond, Turn Left, Walk Right: South Africa's Frustrated Global Reforms (Scottsville, South Africa: University of Natal Press, 2004).
3. For a detailed summary of the major social and physical infrastructure challenges confronting the new government in 1994, see Macro Economic Research Group (MERG), Making Democracy Work: A Framework For Macroeconomic Policy in South Africa (Cape Town: Centre For Development Studies, University of the Western Cape, 1993).
4. See, for example, J. De Loor, Report Prepared by the Task Group on National Housing Policy and Strategy, RP79 (Pretoria: Government Printer, 1992), which recommended a massive increase in state spending to address inadequacy in housing provision;
5. and Planact, Analysis, Critique and Strategic Implications of the De Loor Report (Johannesburg: Planact, 1993), which challenged even these assumptions and recommended even further policy measures to address the housing challenge once the new government had been elected.
6. Pearson Education, South Africa, 1991.
7. IMF International Finance Statistics, 1985;
8. V. Padayachee, The IMF and World Bank in Post-Apartheid South Africa: Prospects and Dangers, Institute of Social Economic Research, University of Durban-Westville, 1990;
9. A. Seidman and N. Seidman, South Africa and the US Multinational Corporations (Westport, CT: Lawrence Hill, 1978).
10. James Boughton, The Silent Revolution (Washington, DC: International Monetary Fund, 2001), pp. 590-595.
11. A serious regional drought in 1992 had prompted the authorities to seek an SDR 614.4 million (US$850 million) Compensatory and Contingency Financing Facility from the IMF. The resources, used to help compensate for a shortfall in export revenues and an unexpected increase in cereal imports, were received in December 1993 and assisted the country in maintaining its foreign exchange reserve levels.
12. See, for example, Siedman and Siedman, South Africa and the US Multi-national Corporations;
13. D. Gisselquist, The Political Economics of International Bank Lending (New York: Praeger, 1981);
14. and Padayachee, The IMF and World Bank. The authors observe that access to IMF financing invariably occurred immediately following political challenges to the apartheid state, including in the immediate aftermath of the Sharpeville massacres in 1960, and five months after the 1976 Soweto uprising. Gisselquist's analysis is particularly direct, suggesting that IMF funding, both in 1976 and 1977, was used to stabilize sentiment among South Africa's foreign bank creditors after Soweto.
15. None of the key policy documents prior to 1994 mention the policy approach to be taken with regard to external borrowing. There is no mention of external borrowing strategy in, for example, African National Congress, Ready to Govern, ANC Policy Guidelines for a Democratic South Africa, 1992;
16. or in MERG, Making Democracy Work.
17. Moreover, external borrowing strategy is also not referred to in the Reconstruction and Development Programme white paper, nor in the government's subsequent macroeconomic strategy adopted in 1996 (Ministry of Finance, Growth, Employment and Redistribution: A Macroeconomic Strategy, Ministry of Finance, Government of South Africa, 1996).
18. South African Reserve Bank, Announcement by Mr. TT Mboweni, Governor of the SARB, Regarding the Squaring-Off of the Oversold Foreign Exchange Forward Book, 2004, p. 1.
19. See Desai, We Are the Poors,
20. and Bond, Turn Left, Walk Right.
21. Government of South Africa, Towards a Ten Year Review: Synthesis Report on Implementation of Government Programmes - A Discussion Document, Policy Coordinating and Advisory Services (PCAS), The Presidency, 2003.
22. Bond, Turn Left, Walk Right.