The economic legacy of the late Nelson Mandela was lauded for legendary in a sense that it instrumented a change in the history of South Africa. A report by Bloomberg said after emerging from his incarceration in apartheid jails in 1990, Mandela worked to seize the mines and banks of his country back. In a matter of four years, the South African government under Mandela's reign managed to cut significant spending, increase foreign investor interest in the country, and getting the African National Congress, which is known to be a fighter against apartheid and had ruled the African region since time, to embrace an open economy.
In an interview, University of Cape Town politics professor Robert Schrire said, "Only a Mandela could have realigned the ANC's economic policy from the mindset of the 1950s, with the development state, with socialism, with nationalization, to the world of the 1990s and beyond. He recognized that for the poor to prosper, the rich had to feel they had a future in the country."
However, Bloomberg said the economic stability of South Africa by Mandela will be challenged due to the country's failure to reduce unemployment and inequality. The news agency pointed out that the jobless rate of the country retained at 24.7%, while average earnings of white households are six times more than their black counterparts. Last year, the youth wing of the ANC waged a nationalization campaign for mines and banks, which, said the report, was the very things Mandela had rejected in 1994. The rand was deemed as the worst performer in a roster of 16 currencies tracked by Bloomberg, and today in Johannesburg traded at ZAR10.4751 to the US dollar as of 1:32PM.
The Congress of South African Trade Unions president Sidumo Dlamini said, "We still have racial unemployment, racial poverty and racial inequality. Our country is still in white hands."
Economist Iraj Abedian, who was one of Mandela's team members who had crafted the 1996 economic policy lauded by international investors, said Mandela did the best he could for South Africa under the circumstances.
"Very few people appreciated what unstable macroeconomic conditions apartheid had left behind. In that type of environment what was critical was to have a credible, not necessarily an instant, solution. Mandela realized what steps had to be taken to normalize and stabilize the economy," Abedian said.
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