Talk:Economy of South Africa

it seems unfair to blame apartheid on the british government as SA was independent long before most of apartheid was implemented

Needs Cleanup

This entry contains a lot of information about the current state of the South African economy and economic policy, but provides little context and is poorly organised. It would be difficult for a reader unfamiliar with South Africa to get a clear sense of the economy's past or future.

There is no explanation of the economic damage caused by apartheid. The policy discussion focuses solely on macroeconomic, trade and industrial policies, with no discussion of social and labour policies and their problems since 1994. Foreign direct investment is not mentioned, yet a whole paragraph is devoted to rather obscure official United States schemes to support capital inflows.

The statistical data provided is rather erratic; for example, production, consumption and trade data for five years is provided for electricity, but value of aggregate trade is given for only one year, with no data as to the composition of trade. The annual average rand:dollar exchange rate is given for the past 15 years, but there is almost no historical data on GDP [gross domestic product] growth, and nothing on other important macroeconomic variables such as investment, international capital flows etc.

Very little data on socio-economic indicators is provided. Overall, the entry reads far more like a brochure aimed at potential investors than a source of understanding for students and the general public.

-- Stephen Gelb, economist and executive director of The Edge Institute in Johannesburg, Mail & Guardian online: Can you trust Wikipedia?, Elvira van Noort, Johannesburg, South Africa, 07 November 2005 09:13.

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Apropos:

1. Households using electricity for lighting: 69.7% in 2001, 57.6% in 1996
2. People with access to electricity: 70% in 2003, 32% in 1994

What's the data source? I understand that there is significant electricity theft that would make the 'official customer' and 'actual user' numbers quite different. A footnote might help.

nice article, but I wish there was a source for all the data. It's useless for me to have just numbers quoted without reference. You could be anyone, posting anything he likes... Emmanuel

_______ A. Nonymous:

Hi, may I suggest instead of "formal economy," something more along the lines of "first documented." Europeans didn't bring an economy, they just documented theirs.

Structure

Page needs slightly better structure. Trade and investment section overlaps with "financial policy", which should probably be "economic policy". I will have a look at other country's pages and compare.

Total screwup

I was looking at the section labelled "history of the South African Economy" and it looked weirdly skimpy. Looking through the history I see that there was a lot more at one stage, but that it all got cut. I'd revert it, but I'm worried I'll do more damage. Can someone help with this?

ManicParroT 23:01, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

I also looked at the section labelled "history of the South African Economy" and looked at the table indicating exchange rates between ZAR and USD. I disagree that we should use any of the Apartheid governments Exchange Rates as it is widely known that they fixed these values and they are thus false values. We should only use these Exchange Rates if we have some sort of ligitimate record/source.

--Trek mambo 21:11, 14 November 2007 (UTC)