By 2020 real national income will have doubled, extended unemployment fallen from to about 27%. South Africa will see a shift from a minority middle class condition to a majority one.
This view came from Dr Cees Bruggemans, Chief economist, First National Bank, at the Rhodes Politics teach-in, on Friday 28 September, and tackling the question of whether the Washington Consensus was dead.
The main reason for an optimistic scenario, he argued, is the state of the world economy. We were living through humanity’s biggest-ever population increase, and at the same time, “two thirds have discovered the rules by which you modernise, industrialise and advance from rural, agricultural poverty to post-industrial prosperity”.
Threats and unknowns included: the changing global power balance; climate change; the Middle East; health epidemics. And the state of democracy and political behaviour would determine whether the poor would tolerate the slow pace of structural change.
Hmm – I wonder if the “two thirds” includes those destructive forces who war-monger, pillage the environment, and show contempt for human rights.
Author
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