The latest report in Centre for Development and Enterprise’s Growth Agenda series argues that slow economic growth is overwhelmingly the result of bad policy choices and a catastrophic decline in governance, coupled with a devastating lack of leadership.

While every instance of bad policy or bad governance damages the economy in a particular way, the sum is greater than the parts because of the devastating effect on confidence in the future.

The decline in confidence has resulted in much less investment in physical infrastructure as well as losses to our human capital stock through skilled emigration.

Examples of bad policies and bad governance that have dragged back economic growth include insufficiently tough fiscal policies, collapsing Eskom, the increasingly desperate state of Transnet, and high levels of crime.

What South Africa most needs to do is actually quite straightforward: we should stop repeating the policy errors of the recent past and, most importantly, we should demand better governance.

Report by the Centre for Development and Enterprise