South Africa is a role model for Africa and against the background of widespread instability in Africa, South Africa has plotted its own course to relative stability, democracy and prosperity.

For instance: 87 straight months of economical growth, its stock market's record gains, its booming vehicle sales and its impressive foreign investment record

These are among the principle conclusions drawn by 'The Economist' in its April 2006 South Africa Survey, which suggests that South Africa has even been trying to nudge the rest of Africa towards emulating its own success. Leading in a new way "In that sense South Africa is beginning to lead the continent in an entirely new way," 'The Economist' says.

The Economist's checklist of South African successes includes:

• The ANC's "relentless" campaign to alleviate the poverty and degradation of the victims of apartheid without resorting to counterproductive populism;
• Since 1994, 1.9-million new homes have been built, 4.5-million households connected to electricity and 11-million homes have been provided with running water; and
• The ANC's targets for raising the living standards of its people are the most ambitious on the continent.

Yet there are ugly warts marring this visage, and The Economist describes these in stark reality. In summary: "South Africa is still deeply scarred by the legacy of Apartheid." The conclusion: "The advance towards Mr Mandela's vision of a 'rainbow nation' has slowed to a crawl."

While the ANC is intervening to speed up change, "those interventions could do more harm than good". And 'The Economist' maintains that few of South Africa's good stories are entirely the ANC's doing. It argues that creativity, which it characterises as South Africa's most impressive asset, increasingly comes from the poorest and historically most disadvantaged of the nation's communities, "who are now building their own ladder out of poverty".

On the economic front, 'The Economist' records South Africa's 87 straight months of growth, its stock market's record gains, its booming vehicle sales and its impressive foreign investment record. But it leavens these positive indictors with the observation that the government is looking politically more vulnerable than at any time since 1994, because "little of this growth has benefited its own core supporters".

The employment rate is "bad news". The economy might be generating jobs, "but not enough to keep pace with the number of new entrants into the labour market".

Source: I-Net Bridge, Apr 6 2006


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