SHIFTING SANDS OF THE GLOBAL ECONOMIC STATUS QUO: THE EMERGENCE OF THE “NEW” GLOBAL SOUTH DEVELOPMENTAL POLICY NARRATIVE AND SOUTH AFRICA’S SPECIAL ECONOMIC ONES.
Summary
This policy paper continues the thematic exploration of SEZs in South Africa against the backdrop of the current crises facing the global capitalist system, including the impending climate catastrophe. The ways in which these crises affect South Africa’s global, continental and regional trajectory are considered with more specific case studies. These are explicitly vulnerable to the ebb and flow of capital associated with the Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa (BRICS) bloc, the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) and the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Such forms of Southern and Eastern collaboration are contrasted with the increasingly tense trade relationships South Africa has with the United States in which trade is a form of retaining global hegemonic status by any means possible, Britain undergoing a chaotic Brexit process, and the G20 whose Compact with Africa investment initiative emanated from Germany in 2017, with South Africa as a central facilitator.
Of critical importance is how the global socio-economic- environmental crises now emerging will affect development prospects and narratives regarding not only South Africa’s export-oriented, carbon-intensive micro- and macro-economic policies. In addition, at stake is a broader South-South collaboration strategy, based upon development of a counter-hegemonic Global South strategy to accelerate ‘inclusive’ development, driven increasingly by Chinese and Indian capital aiming to take advantage of South Africa’s Special Economic Zones (SEZs).
The SEZs began as Industrial Development Zones promoted especially by Western-oriented extractive-sector corporate interests, aiming to stimulate beneficiation and manufacturing. They were endorsed by the Department of Trade and Industry (dti) in 2000, and rebranded through 2014 legislation that provides a generous array of corporate-welfare incentives.
Since then, in part due to shortfalls in energy supply, the SEZs initially contributed little to industrialisation, as acknowledged by Finance Minister Tito Mboweni’s August 2019 policy paper, Economic transformation, inclusive growth, and competitiveness. Nevertheless, the dti steadfastly invests huge amounts of capital and operating subsidies into their establishment. President Cyril Ramaphosa, Mboweni and Trade and Industry Minister Ebrahim Patel place great faith in the development potential of the SEZs.
Since the implementation of the 2014 SEZ Act, the annual allocation of state investment in SEZ infrastructure and operational subsidies nearly doubled, and the number of proposed SEZs is growing. It is no exaggeration to say that from national government’s developmental policy planning trajectory statements and dti documentation, the SEZs are seen as the fulcrum of South Africa’s development strategy in the decades to come.
