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A Comparative Analysis of South Africa as a Semi-Industrialised Developing Country

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

Extract

South Africa has neither a developed nor a typical underdeveloped economy. Too often it has been wrongly classified, along with, say, Australia and New Zealand, as one of the peripheral developed countries, because only a part of the economy and population have the characteristics we associate with that group. Yet its economy is distinctly different from others in sub-Saharan Africa. South Africa falls squarely into the category which the World Bank classifies as ‘upper middle-income’ developing economies, with G.N.P. per capita in 1982 ranging from $2,000 to $7,000 and averaging $2,500, thereby including South Africa, with $2,700.1 (By contrast, Kenya's G.N.P. per capita was $400 and Britain's $10,000). The World Bank's group includes Algeria, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, South Korea, Venezuela, and Yugoslavia. South Africa shares many structural economic characteristics with these semi-industrialised countries.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1988

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References

Page 473 note 1 World Bank, World Development Report, 1984 (Washington, D.C., 1984), p. 219.Google Scholar

Page 474 note 1 For instance, Cohen, Robin, Endgame in South Africa? The Changing Structures and Ideology of Apartheid (London and Paris, 1986).Google Scholar

Page 475 note 1 World Bank, op. cit. More instructive comparisons can be made for the period prior to 1982 because the trends are less disturbed by the recent recession. However, the data published in the World Development Report, 1988 (Washington, D.C., 1988) show South Africa in an even poorer light compared with other countries for the period 1980–1986. The arguments of this article would apply a fortiori.

Page 476 note 1 Source: World Development Report, 1984, tables 2 and 19.

Page 477 note 1 The 1970–1980 comparison is based on the 1980 boundaries of South Africa and excludes the Homelands of Transkei, Bophuthatswana, Venda, and Ciskei (T.B.V.C.). The decision of the Statistics Department to redefine the nest each time a fledgling drops out of it has been a menace, sometimes a disaster, for serious statistical analysis.

Page 477 note 2 Nedbank Group, South Africa: an appraisal, (Johannesburg, 1983), citing Human Sciences Research Council (H.S.R.C.) projections.

Page 477 note 3 South African Reserve Bank, Quarterly Bulletin (Pretoria), various issues.

Page 478 note 1 Sources: ibid. and Central Statistical Services, Bulletin of Statistics (Pretoria), various issues.

Page 479 note 1 Source: Reserve Bank, op. cit.

Page 479 note 2 Stephen Lewis, ‘Economics and Apartheid: the impact of South Africa's economic policies’, figure 2.5, typescript.

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Page 482 note 2 See Knight, J. B., ‘Labour Allocation and Unemployment in South Africa’, in Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, 41, 2, 1978, pp. 117–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Page 482 note 3 Ibid.

Page 483 note 1 Cited in Nedbank Group, op. cit. p. 36.

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Page 488 note 1 Source: World Development Report, 1984, table 25. The South African figures for 1981 have been calculated from official sources.

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