Results for “south africa” 309 found
South Africa update
President Cyril Ramaphosa earlier this month said economic progress since the formation of the new coalition in June meant annual GDP growth could triple to 3 per cent after a decade at less than 1 per cent.
But in the government’s first half-year budget on Wednesday, finance minister Enoch Godongwana cut the growth target for this year to 1.1 per cent from the 1.3 per cent target set by the previous government in February. Over the next three years, he said he expected GDP growth to average 1.8 per cent.
Here is more from the FT.
South Africa update
The African National Congress no longer regards privatisation as a “swear word” and has accepted that “bringing private sector money on board is not selling your soul”, said South Africa’s deputy president Paul Mashatile.
In an interview with the Financial Times at the end of a week-long investor roadshow to Britain and Ireland, Mashatile said South Africa’s new government, in which the ANC is sharing power with the market-leaning Democratic Alliance, had understood the need for more private investment in sectors such as energy, water and infrastructure. “We don’t have the money to do it, so we need the private sector,” said Mashatile, considered a potential successor to President Cyril Ramaphosa.
Investor sentiment towards South Africa has improved dramatically since the formation of the GNU, after 15 years in which the economy has barely grown against the backdrop of corruption scandals and government mismanagement of basic services.
The South African rand has risen more than 12 per cent against the US dollar this year, behind only the Argentine peso and Turkish lira. The Johannesburg bourse’s benchmark index is up 21 per cent in US dollar terms including dividends.
Here is more from the FT.
On South African electricity (from the comments)
Does visiting South Africa make you more right-wing or more left-wing?
Perhaps “both” is the correct answer?
The right-wing tendencies are easiest to explain. South Africa is obviously much wealthier than the rest of sub-Saharan Africa, and of course Westerners play a larger role in its history and also in its present. You can put different glosses on that, but a variety of those paths lead to right-wing conclusions. The left-wing lessons are more novel to ponder, here are a few:
1. Following the removal of apartheid, a black middle class and upper class arose fairly quickly. That testifies to the importance of environment, opportunity, and circumstance. Of course most of the blacks in South Africa still lack adequate opportunity, most of all because of poor education and also sometimes because of poor location within the country, a legacy from segregated apartheid times. Overall, visiting the country causes one to upgrade the importance of opportunity, and to recognize that bad circumstances for talented people can continue for a very long time.
2. Post-apartheid economic performance has been disappointing, and economic inequalities have risen not declined. That suggests more capitalism can exacerbate economic inequality, even as political inequalities are eased.
3. Apartheid was enforced with a remarkably small number of police, per capita much less than most Western countries at the time. That might suggest a kind of Marxian and Foucauldian view that oppressive systems take on a force of their own, through norms and expectations, and are harder to dismantle than an analysis of simple coercion might indicate. The disappointments of post-apartheid South Africa hardly refute that suggestion, as those earlier norms and expectations are by no means entirely gone.
4. In the new, non-apartheid South Africa, sometimes class appears to be far more important than race per se. A certain number of blacks have been slotted into the upper classes, through their business successes, but the all-important role of class continues very much as before. Tthat point appears more Marxian than contemporary leftist, but Marx still is on the left.
5. You can see how much of South African history has been shaped by the roles of gold and diamonds in their economy. That again points in Marxian directions, more than today’s left. In South Africa, the means of production really mattered.
6. What is the ideal of color-blindedness supposed to mean there, after so many centuries of color mattering so much and in so many formal ways? They even still call one group “Coloureds.” Would it be so wrong to suspect SA color-blindedness advocates of somehow missing the point, and asking for something that is both illusory and unobtainable?
I am not sure how much I agree with all of these, only that they are ways I can imagine visiting South Africa and coming away more rather than less left-wing.
What else?
Why you should visit Cape Town, South Africa
First, it is one of the most beautiful cities and surrounding environs. I would put it on a par with Vancouver and Hong Kong and Wellington, New Zealand. Perhaps it is closest to Wellington.
Second, it is far safer than I was expecting. Throughout the week, I never once experienced angst, and that included walks at night and a visit to a township. Certainly there are dangerous places around, but you can do a whole, fulfilling trip without them. I felt safer than in NW Washington, DC.
Third, the flight wasn’t nearly as bad as I had thought. I am used to very long flights to Asia that leave at 11 a.m., wihch is suboptimal for me. The flights DC to Cape Town — both ways direct I might add — left early evening. So you read for a few hours, sleep for seven hours, and then read for a few hours again. Then you arrive. I’ve experienced more painful flights going to the West Coast from Dulles. It never felt like 15 hours, nor the 14 hours coming back.
Fourth, it is inexpensive.
Fifth, the people are very friendly.
Sixth, during my trip the weather was excellent. Some rain, but mostly during my other commitments. It was in the 65 to 70 degree range, and sunny, most of the time I was going around.
I don’t have much to add to the tips in the guidebooks, and from MR readers. But definitely take a day tour by car down to the bottom of the Cape, and see where the Indian and Atlantic Oceans meet. Along the way, without much trying, you likely will see ostriches, baboons, and many penguins, in addition to various exotic African birds.
South Africa is one of those countries that has no other country like it. That means you can learn more by going there. That means you should go there. Q.E.D.
South Africa and its history
Almost three years earlier, a sombre Paul Kruger had warned that Britain would find conquering the Boer states no easy matter. In the sense that they were certainly not gained on the cheap, this was an accurate judgment. By the end of the war, the British had been obliged to mobilise almost 450 000 imperial solders to defeat Boer forces, which had been able to field roughly 80 000 combatants at most. Their extended resistance turned London’s South African campaign into the largest and most costly war fought by the British between 1815 and 1914. This was a colonial war which Britain’s Treasury estimated in September 1899 would require the despatch of at most 75 000 troops and funding of about £10 million for a campaign of two to three months. By the time the conflict finally ended, that cost had risen to £217 million. What this balance sheet reflected was the enormous military investment that the British Empire required to defeat two of the world’s smallest agrarian states.
That is from New History of South Africa, by Hermann Giliomee, Bernard Mbenga, and Bill Nasson, a very excellent book. I found it to be one of the best single-volume histories of any country I have read. The other South Africa book I found especially helpful was Understanding South Africa, by Carien du Plessis and Martin Plaut. One of the best things about travel is you understand a country — through books — much better than before you went there. Everything is more vivid, and you retain much more of it.
Where and how to eat in Cape Town, South Africa
Don’t laugh, but basically you want to eat in the restaurants with the beautiful women. And with the views of the waterfront.
You may recall those are usually the opposite of the correct recommendations. But in Cape Town, there is no coherent “mom and pop” restaurant sector, based on either recent Asian or Latino immigrants, or based on an existing middle class. You simply want to go to the nice, fancy places. And you don’t need my list, many sources can tell you which ones those are.
The economics of that are simple. There is a well-defined class of people with a lot of money, and the best restaurants do everything they can to target them, including seaside views. That is by far the best way to get good food here, arguably the only way. You cannot in fact “arbitrage against the inequality,” even if you think you might wish to.
Usually you should order seafood, and (as in Chile) be suspicious of any menu item with a cream sauce, which will be overdone on the creamy side. You may see batches of Afrikaans words on the English-language menus, don’t worry just pull out your ChatGPT app and enjoy the feeling of strangeness.
I did have one meal of grilled meats and bbq in a black township, and it was not bad. But I would say you are going for the sociological experience more than for the food. You’ll also get some South African side dishes, such as the corn meal, that may not pop up in the fancier restaurants. So do that if you can, I also found the experience to be safe and not stressful.
Prices here are very low, and an excellent meal can be well under half of the comparable cost in the United States or Europe, maybe even 3x lower. Wherever you go, make sure they give you a seat looking out on the water!
What should I do in Cape Town, South Africa?
I won’t be there for long, but what should I see and what should I eat? How is the general level of safety these days?
I thank you all in advance.
South Africa fact of the day
Two economists from the Harvard Growth Lab (Shah and Sturzenegger) estimate that the average transport costs for those who are employed in South Africa is equal to 57% of net wages when time to commute is accounted for.
Here is the whole John McDermott tweet storm, in part that is the spatial legacy from the earlier system of apartheid, and in part from poor public transport systems. Here is a related blog post.
Anarchy in South Africa
Public services such as police, fire, and traffic control in South Africa are breaking down. Private firms are stepping in to take some of the burden. Twenty two percent of Johannesburg’s fire engines are owned and operated by private firms.
Fire Ops employs more than 60 firefighters across seven fire stations in Johannesburg and owns two fire engines—including one now sporting the same shade of blue Discovery uses for its logo and much of its branding—as well as six smaller high-pressure-pump response vehicles.
Discovery says the blue firetruck responded to 172 building fires between Fire Force’s launch through the end of January.
Mr. Ossip said the Discovery-branded truck promotes the insurer’s brand and lowers damages, including to multimillion-dollar homes in some of Johannesburg’s toniest areas. “You need to just save one or two of those a year and it is substantial savings,” he said.
The service helps alleviate a shortage of operational fire engines in Johannesburg, a spread-out city of more than 5.5 million residents, in situations where minutes can make the difference between a blaze limited to a couple of rooms and one that destroys an entire house or spreads to neighboring homes.
Robert Mulaudzi, a spokesman for the City of Johannesburg Emergency Management Services, said the city currently has about seven operational fire engines across 30 fire stations.
…Fire Ops, which invoices buildings’ owners for fire services, says that while it responds to all calls, it will give priority to clients, including Discovery policyholders, when simultaneous fires break out. Other insurers usually pick up the bill when the company puts out a fire in a home not insured by Discovery, said De Wet Engelbrecht, Fire Ops’s chief executive.
In 19th century Great Britain prosecution assocations and insurance firms were responsible for much of the policing (see Stephen Davies in The Voluntary City.) In Lessons from Gurgaon, India’s Private City (working paper) Shruti Rajagopolan and I discuss private police and fire services in modern day Gurgaon. In general, the private firms provide excellent service relative to their public counterparts but, as in Gurgaon, there are limits to how much the private firms can do without large economies of scale:
…Fire Ops also has to navigate public infrastructure that doesn’t always work, including traffic lights, fire hydrants and municipal water supplies….In September, both Fire Ops and the city’s fire department responded to a blaze at Little Forest Centre, a private special-needs school in Johannesburg, but a water shortage in the area meant all fire hydrants were empty, said Kate More, the school’s owner and principal, who isn’t a Discovery policyholder.
Despite Fire Ops sourcing water from a neighbor’s pool, the school burned down.
Addendum: In unrelated news, just one year after its grand opening Whole Foods is closing its downtown San Francisco store because they can’t ensure the safety of their employees.
Should South Africa lock down?
The lockdown will lead to 29 times more lives lost than the harm it seeks to prevent from Covid-19 in SA, according to a conservative estimate contained in a new model developed by local actuaries.
The model, which will be made public today for debate, was developed by a consortium calling itself Panda (Pandemic ~ Data Analysis), which includes four actuaries, an economist and a doctor, while the work was checked by lawyers and mathematicians. The process was led by two fellows at the Actuarial Society of SA, Peter Castleden and Nick Hudson.
They have sent a letter, explaining its model, to President Cyril Ramaphosa. In the letter, headed “Lockdown is a humanitarian disaster to dwarf Covid-19”, they call for an end to the lockdown, a focus on isolating the elderly and allowing children to go back to school, while ensuring the economy restarts so that lives can be saved.
The paper also is at the link, and it is perhaps more of a rough and ready calculation than a formal model per se. Nonetheless South Africa has a relatively young population and the core points are well taken:
In SA, they estimate that 5.4 years of life have been lost per Covid-19 death. They then multiply this by the range of deaths which they predict – 20,000 – as well as the actuarial society’s prediction of 88,000 fatalities. They factor in that the lockdown will have reduced some deaths, but not all. In the end, their model translated into a minimum of 26,800 “years of lives lost” due to Covid-19, and a maximum of 473,500 years. (This, critically, shouldn’t be confused with the actual number of fatalities expected from Covid-19.)
The actuaries then used the figures predicted by the National Treasury to model the impact on poverty. On Friday, the Treasury estimated that between 3-million and 7-million jobs will be lost due to the measures taken to combat the virus. The actuaries then work out that, conservatively, 10% of South Africans will become poorer, and as a result, will lose a few months of their lives.
It is a good question how many of the models used for the West have taken into account the “demonstration effect,” namely that poorer (and much younger) countries will be tempted to follow the same policies. I’ve yet to see a good discussion of this.
Are all humans South Africans?
Africa was the birth-place of Homo sapiens and has the earliest evidence for symbolic behaviour and complex technologies. The best-attested early flowering of these distinctive features was in a glacial refuge zone on the southern coast 100–70 ka, with fewer indications in eastern Africa until after 70 ka. Yet it was eastern Africa, not the south, that witnessed the first major demographic expansion, ~70–60 ka, which led to the peopling of the rest of the world. One possible explanation is that important cultural traits were transmitted from south to east at this time. Here we identify a mitochondrial signal of such a dispersal soon after ~70 ka – the only time in the last 200,000 years that humid climate conditions encompassed southern and tropical Africa. This dispersal immediately preceded the out-of-Africa expansions, potentially providing the trigger for these expansions by transmitting significant cultural elements from the southern African refuge.
That is from Teresa Rito, et.al., in Nature, vis Charles Klingman.
From the comments, on South Africa
I think the chances of a populist land grab in South Africa (never very high) have actually gone down over the past few months. Look at the ANC’s actions during its 24 years in power, not its rhetoric. Many bad policies for sure, but never anything close to radically populist, of the sort that would seriously scare the financial markets. Destruction of the (well entrenched and sophisticated) property rights system would certainly do that. So it’s unlikely to happen.
The only time there seemed to be a risk of edging in that direction was when Zuma and his faction started seriously losing support (2016-17). They responded by ratcheting up the populist and racist rhetoric (“white monopoly capital” etc), but ultimately it didn’t work. They lost, and power in the ANC has shifted back to the more market friendly centrists, typified by Ramaphosa.
That’s why I think the risks have gone down (since Zuma was ousted), despite the recent parliamentary vote to “expropriate without compensation”. The sound bite plays well to a certain audience, as other commenters have noted, but I agree it’s mostly just signaling. When you look at the details it’s not as scary as it sounds.
Firstly, they didn’t vote to do it, they voted to set up a committee to investigate doing it, subject to various caveats and constraints, e.g. must increase agricultural production and improve food security; there must be public and expert consultation; appropriate mechanisms, etc. It seems extremely unlikely that the ANC’s intention is to summarily expropriate all land without compensation, nor does it say that in the parliamentary motion or in any ANC policy statement (that is indeed the EFF’s position, but they have less than 10% electoral support). Far more likely is we’ll end up with some sort of watered down constitutional amendment that allows expropriation without compensation in certain defined and limited circumstances, but overall system of property rights remains intact for vast majority of land and other assets.
By the way, I suspect the most outsiders seriously underestimate the strength of South Africa’s constitution and supporting institutions. They have stood remarkably firm over the past few years in the face of concerted attempts by Zuma and his cronies to undermine them. Compared, for example, to a country like Turkey, whose constitution, judiciary, media and civil society have been crushed in the space of a few years by a similarly venal and power-deluded single politician.
That is from Greg.
South Africa update
The National Assembly on Tuesday set in motion a process to amend the Constitution so as to allow for the expropriation of land without compensation.
The motion, brought by the EFF leader Julius Malema, was adopted with a vote of 241 in support, and 83 against.
The only parties who did not support the motion were the DA, Freedom Front Plus, Cope and the ACDP.
The matter will now be referred to the Constitutional Review Committee which must report back to Parliament by August 30.
That is from a South African website, and the story really does seem to be true. Yet reputable Western outlets do not seem to have much interest in reporting on this, except for this piece on Quartz.
There has been more coverage of Cape Town possibly running out of water. I do understand that foreign troubles often look worse from a distance, but still in an era when emerging economies have been booming, including in most of Africa, it is hard not to be put off by these developments. I am not sure how to interpret the data quality issues, but it is not obvious that the median wage has increased since the fall of apartheid.
My short essay on opportunity concepts for South Africa
Here is the piece (pdf), here is the broader symposium, with other notable contributors, including Bill Easterly, Charles Kenny, and Brandon Fuller. Here is one excerpt from my essay:
…we should keep in mind the strictures of Dani Rodrik that every country, or sometimes every region, is different. Nonetheless this reorientation of measures of progress would have some implications for policy analysis. In particular, high levels of inequality, inequality of opportunity, and relative income mobility would not be seen as problems per se.
Furthermore, the frequent appearance of those concepts in political and also scholarly rhetoric would be seen as misleading and a distraction. The focus instead would be on expanding the absolute size of opportunities for the poor. To make this more concrete, consider a policy change which benefitted both the rich and the poor. Many of the equality metrics would have to struggle with such a policy, which might increase inequality in some manner, whereas the approach recommended in this paper could endorse it wholeheartedly.
It is interesting to note the recent visit of Thomas Piketty to South Africa. He called for a national minimum wage, greater worker participation in company boards, and land reform. Those are all attempts to provide equalizing measures across one dimension or another. Although some parts of those ideas may have merit, they do not seem overall focused on incentivizing wealth creation and opportunity. Piketty even stated: “I think it’s fair to say that black economic empowerment strategies, which were mostly based on voluntary market transactions […] were not that successful in spreading wealth.” It perhaps would have been more appropriate to note South Africa remains a highly regulated, highly legally privileged, and indeed mercantilist economy; the country ranked only number 72 on the 2015 Heritage Foundation Index of Economic Freedom. So perhaps empowerment based on voluntary market transactions has not yet really been tried.
The absolute opportunities approach also suggests a different emphasis for a topic such as land reform. Many arguments for land reform focus on the difference in the land holdings between the rich and the poor, yet perhaps those are not the relevant numbers. A better focus would be the following question: “by how much would receiving more land elevate the opportunities of the poor?” If indeed the answer to that question is optimistic, the case for land reform will be stronger.
Do read the whole thing.
That is from Marcel. Two other points are neglected when it comes to South Africa and electricity. First, as of March 2024 partial deregulation is in the offing (Bloomberg):
More here. Second, solar power is likely to save South Africa in a big way. And decentralized rooftop solar has doubled since 2022.
Power generation is often cited as a major reason for thinking South Africa is on the verge of collapse. But the entire story — its most recent installments included — is actually a reason to be (somewhat) optimistic about the place. It is not just that electricity is important per se, but also this example shows South Africa can move toward solving a problem through a mix of policy and technology.