Mbeki: SA has bright future

2005-02-18 21:18

Cape Town - South Africans have every reason to be confident of a bright future for their country, says President Thabo Mbeki.

Writing in the African National Congress's on-line publication, ANC Today, on Friday, he compared the transition period in South Africa to that in former communist East European states.

In those states, GDP fell between 20% and 40% in the decade after 1989 - an economic contraction likened by some economists to the great depression of the 1930s.

Among other things, average wages in those countries also dropped sharply, and inequality increased.

Happily, South Africa's own reform process during its first decade of liberation did not produce the "spectacular fall in living standards" and the "hardship for millions" as had been written about Eastern Europe.

'Improving standards of living'

Mbeki said: "This did not happen by chance or accident. It required the most careful political, economic and social management of our reform process.

"Among other things, from the beginning we were determined to ensure that we did everything possible to improve the standard of living of especially the formerly oppressed.

"We were equally determined to ensure that our economy did not collapse or go into decline.

"This meant that we had to do everything possible to unite the greatest number of our people, despite the fact that we were emerging out of a difficult past, characterised by division and bitter conflict.

"We had to unite our people, regardless of our immediate past, around the objective of ensuring that the new South Africa should succeed, though it was still an infant that, even tentatively, now belonged to all who lived in it, black and white.

The country's reform process

Mbeki said: "This intervention, and other measures, produced the results that seem to have eluded the countries of Eastern Europe during their own first decade of transition."

The government and the South African people as a whole ensured that "as we engaged in our own reform process, our country did not suffer from the sharp declines in GDP experienced by the East European countries".

Instead, GDP grew steadily and doubled during the first decade of liberation.

In addition, real disposable incomes among South Africans had grown, contrary to the experience in Eastern Europe.

Mbeki said: "This helped us to generate the resources we need, among other things to address some of the most urgent needs of the poor of our country.

"Even as we tightened our belts, to reduce the budget deficit to manageable levels, we ensured that we intervene to assist the poorest in our society."

- SAPA