Re-engaging with the global trading system : the political economy of trade policy reform in post-apartheid South Africa, 1994-2004

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Abstract

The thesis examines the political economy of trade policy reform in post-apartheid
South Africa. It challenges mainstream accounts of contemporary trade policy in
South Africa, which have advanced a solely economic rationale to explain the policy
choices made by the ANC governments since 1994. The thesis argues that, far more
than these accounts concede, international and domestic political economy
considerations have also played a central part in the ANC governments' calculations
to undertake trade reform to the degree it has. Trade reform in South Africa has been
the linchpin of a global adjustment strategy pursued by the domestic political elites by
which they have sought to fulfill South Africa's global, regional and domestic
political and economic objectives.
At the global level, the South African state has vigorously pursued trade liberalisation
in order to shed its past image of international pariah and reintegrate itself into the
global economy on the basis of outward-oriented growth. Restoring South Africa's
international political respectability has been as important as reversing its economic
marginalisation in the international division of labour. At the regional level, the
South African state has used trade policy reform as a foreign economic policy tool not
only to rebuild political and diplomatic relations with African countries strained
during the apartheid era - but also to advance its hegemonic ambitions, particularly in
Southern Africa, as well as reinforce the region's ability to engage with the forces of
economic globalisation. The extent to which South Africa's regional hegemonic
ambitions can be achieved, however, lies ultimately with how adeptly the country can
reconcile these regional aspirations with its domestic pressures.
At the domestic level, trade reform has been deployed by the decision-making elites
not only to lock in the government's austere macroeconomic policy but also to curtail
the power of domestic interests that have benefited from trade protectionism in the
past. In return for their co-operation, the South African state has allowed these
interests, notably business and labour, enhanced institutional representation in
economic policymaking. In this sense trade policy has been employed to serve
domestic as much as foreign political and economic policy ends.

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