Description

Growth has been defined severally in different economic forums and literature. South Africa’s long run growth experience is not too different from that recorded by many other nations of the world. Expectedly, there has never been any consensus on the main factor that drove economic growth till date.

One striking observation however, is that the interplay of the forces that drive economic growth must have induced the unprecedented wave of growth that the economy witnessed from the 1900s to the late 1960s. The 1970s marked the beginning of a world wide slowdown in economic growth which would last for another two decades. In the 1980s, the South African economy was shut out of the world as a result of its apartheid regime and it would take another decade before international sanctions were lifted after concerted efforts by the political leadership to restore democratic institutions in the early 1990s.

This paper focuses on three main areas: describes South Africa’s long-run growth experience; ascertain whether South Africa has grown through capital accumulation or TFP and; present relevant aspects of the Solow model and/or endogenous growth theory in the light of the South African growth experience.