Home › Books & Reviews › Capsule Reviews › The Economics Of Apartheid

The Economics Of Apartheid

Stephen R. Lewis, Jr.
Reviewed by Jennifer Seymour Whitaker
Spring 1990
The Economics Of Apartheid
Stephen R. Lewis, Jr.
Council on Foreign Relations Press
1990
195 pp.
$17.95
Login or Register to leave a comment.

"The South African economy is too far advanced to be able to sustain apartheid." Why this striking conclusion makes sense and how the heavily state-run economy reached that point are explained in some detail in this interesting and timely volume. The limited but real effects of external pressure are carefully analyzed, and there is an imaginative examination of what directions might be taken by a post-apartheid economy. The author, an economist with a good bit of African experience, is president of Carleton College.

Related

Essay, Mar/Apr 1996
South Africa: Tough Road to Prosperity
R. Stephen Brent

South Africa's political miracle may not be followed by an economic one. Despite its claims of superiority to black governments to the north, the National Party pursued economic policies like most African countries'--import substitution, a wasteful public sector--leading to staggering black unemployment. Only slow private sector growth can lift the black majority out of poverty. But the National Unity government, while avoiding the worst populist temptations, must win citizens over to structural adjustment with gains in education, infrastructure investment, and affirmative action. Of those given little, much is asked.

Read
Essay, Jan/Feb 1996
Pivotal States and U.S. Strategy
Robert Chase, Emily Hill, Paul Kennedy

The United States is spreading its aid and efforts too thin in the developing world. It should focus on a small number of "pivotal states": countries whose fate determines the survival and success of the surrounding region and ultimately the stability of the international system. The list should include Mexico, Brazil, Algeria, Egypt, South Africa, Turkey, India, Pakistan, and Indonesia. A discriminating strategy for shoring up the developing world is a wise way to address traditional security threats and new transnational issues; it might be thought of as the new, improved domino theory. If effective, it could forestall the move in Congress to wipe out nearly all foreign aid.

Read
Essay, Special 1983
Africa Beset
Jennifer Seymour Whitaker

For much of Africa this year, immediate threats to survival dominated national agendas. In the extreme north and south, Libya and South Africa attacked the territory of weaker neighbors. Less noticed but far more widely devastating, a harsh drought destroyed crops across the continent, confronting more than 20 million people with the prospect of starvation. Declining rates of per capita food production over the last decade, coupled with escalating debt and falling returns on exports, left many African states at the margins of existence--at least according to Western calculations. And at year's end, a military coup abruptly ended four years of American-style democratic government in Africa's largest nation, Nigeria, renewing fears about political upheaval throughout the continent.

Read
Cover image

In the Magazine

November/December 2009, 6, 88
Essay
The Dollar and the Deficits
C. Fred Bergsten

The global economic crisis has revealed the folly of large U.S. budget and trade deficits, as well as of the strong dollar that makes them possible. If it is serious about recovery, the United States must balance the budget, stimulate private saving, and embrace a declining dollar.
Read