Assessing South Africa's New Growth Path: framework for change?

The New Growth Path (NGP) is the symbolic policy document of South Africa's newly formed Department of Economic Development. It marks an intended break with the growth path of the first two decades of the post-apartheid era. But does it do so in principle and is it likely to do so in practice? This paper suggests otherwise because of its failure to address, let alone remedy, the key determining features of the post-apartheid economic landscape. These are the (international) financialisation of (domestic) conglomerate capital especially associated with (illegal) capital flight, the complicity of a newly formed black elite, and the continuing reliance upon how these interact with South Africa's longstanding mineralsenergy complex (MEC). Without breaking with these features, the NGP in particular, and policy more generally, will seek to temper the gains and organisational opposition of better-off workers for putative benefits to those deprived of employment and basic levels of public provision.