THE AFRICAN PROGRAMME ON RETHINKING DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS (APORDE): Seminar Three

Busa Sibeko participates in this webinar together with Léonce Ndikumana and Duma Gqubule, she speaks from 6.47 – 22.20. South Africa’s economic and social policy responses to the Covid-19 pandemic have been strongly contested. Its economic policy response has brought into sharp focus the underlying debate about the role of the state, and particularly monetary and fiscal policy. The “sound money” view is that it would be imprudent for South Africa to allow the government deficit to rise further in any circumstances. Critics of this view have argued that South Africa has been “stuck in stabilisation…” with a cost-controlling rather than a developmental state. In this view, the latest crisis is just another manifestation that South Africa is stuck in a state of “permanent economic emergency” where it is never “allowed” to make the expenditures and policy shifts necessary to address the country’s deep-lying economic and social structural problems.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=duUUkiz1eX4