After the Bell: Thirty years on — the SA economic ‘eras’ of apartheid versus post-apartheid

Do people who live during a certain age necessarily think the age in which they live is the most dramatic of all? If you were a Roman citizen circa … let’s say 51 BC … Julius Caesar had just won the Gallic Wars, invaded Britain and built a bridge across the Rhine. There are political battles to come within the First Triumvirate and an assassination too. It was a time of huge political turmoil and enormous technological advances. Roads stretched across the European continent and wealth accumulated at a rapid pace. 

If you were a Roman citizen then, would you not have thought, “What a great moment to be alive!”? Presumably, if you were Spanish you would have been less enamoured. But even then, perhaps you would have appreciated the powerful character of the moment, even if it was one of military defeat. The great wheel of history was beginning to turn faster in the West and the East, with more vigour and meaning. 

We mark history with “turning points” and moments of great significance. From our perspective, there were times of great advance, times of great tragedy and times of great significance. We probably underestimate the times of consolidation and unfolding when “history” seemed less momentous. It’s difficult to see the twists of history as they happen, because every moment of the present seems important to those experiencing it. 

One of our worst traits is to confuse round numbers with historic significance. Important eras don’t always coincide conveniently with decades or centuries. Yet, as a mental exercise, let’s assume that we can divide the previous 30 years of democracy into two periods, as Business Leadership South Africa’s chief executive, Busi Mavuso, has done so interestingly. 

And perhaps we can extend that analogy to the apartheid era, as writer Andrew Kenny has set out very powerfully. 

Mavuso’s point is that there have been two distinct eras during the post-apartheid period: the first was marked by SA’s economic reintegration into the global economic system. Then, the economy and business “leapt forward”. By 2008, SA was regularly recording economic growth of above 5%, boasted an investment grade credit rating, had a sovereign debt:GDP ratio of 24% and an unemployment rate of just under 20%.

“Per capita GDP had leapt from $3,786 in 1994 to $6,356 and would go on to peak at $8,800 in 2011. This created a strong environment for business, which rapidly evolved.” But in the second “era”, all of this was unwound after “government-led extortion and corruption took hold”. Since the “peak” in 2008, South Africa has slid backwards on just about every one of these indicators.

“Debt:GDP is now about 75% and growing. We will not even manage economic growth of 1% this year and barely more than that next year. Unemployment is at 32% while GDP per capita has fallen to $6,130,” Mavuso points out.

Interesting analysis, but her main suggestion — or hope — is that we have turned the corner. The State Capture era has made clear what happens when bad leadership and bad policy coincide. And heading into the general election, this should be top of mind.

What about extending the examination further back? 

Kenny asks: How do the first 30 years of National Party rule during the apartheid era compare to the first 30 years of ANC rule during the democratic era? There are some interesting similarities, including that the first portions of both were marked by economic advances. 

The leaders of the initial apartheid period tried to justify their mad ideology of grand apartheid, which saw people driven off their ancestral lands by men wielding guns and whips and driving bulldozers, and dumped into a bizarre archipelago of Bantustans, or homelands. There was petty apartheid, too, “which might have had an even greater effect on disrupting people’s lives and humiliating them”.

I disagree but, anyway, it is true as Kenny says that apartheid converted the free-spirited Boers of the Great Trek and the South African War into “spiteful little bureaucrats”, flashing their torches into a car parked at the side of the road to check whether the copulating couple inside were of the same race.

But at another level, the Nats were developing the South African economy “with daring, enterprise and skill. They had huge economic successes.” They promoted industrialisation, built roads, railways and waterworks, constructed the world’s biggest coal power stations, giving South Africa a plentiful supply of the world’s cheapest electricity, and pioneered a massive advance in coal-to-liquid fuel technology with their Sasol plants. 

“The economy grew over 6% under [Hendrik] Verwoerd. South Africa became by far the most powerful economy in Africa,” Kenny writes.

Apartheid and ANC rule