Is South Africa’s apartheid policy of beggaring its neighbours backfiring?

In this short period of time Hanlon estimated that 100 000 people died and a million were displaced as a result of the violence unleashed by the apartheid regime. In the same period, more money was lost to these economies as a direct result of fighting apartheid machinations than these states received in foreign aid. 

The military actions of the apartheid regime, and the destabilisation of other regional economies that it undertook, were in Hanlon’s view, “part of a coherent South African strategy”. The apartheid regime not only wanted to fight so-called border wars to keep anti-apartheid insurrection away. It also wanted the resultant impoverishment of neighbouring states for propagandist “proof” that black majority governments could not rule themselves. To highlight this, Hanlon titled his book, Beggar Your Neighbours.

To better understand Hanlon’s title, one must understand that in 1937 British economist Joan Robinson described what she called “beggar-my-neighbour policies”. These economic policies work to distort trade to enrich a nation in the short term while making its neighbours poorer. In the long run, the whole neighbourhood, including the state that implements such policies, suffers from the total reduction of trade that inevitably results. 

It is difficult to deny that a good number of foreigners who have found themselves in South Africa have done so because of apartheid actions that destabilised regional economies. It is important to now ask how post-apartheid South Africa’s trade policies have enabled regional prosperity or worked against it.

In at least one instance it may be said that post-apartheid South African economic protectionism contributed to the downfall of the economy of Zimbabwe. As noted, 20 years ago, by Richard Hess in a paper for the London-based Overseas Development Institute: Zimbabwe-South Africa trade has always been marked by huge imbalance in favour of South Africa. Yet, when a bilateral trade agreement that dated back to 1964 expired in 1992, “South Africa unilaterally abrogated it and steeply hiked tariffs on Zimbabwean imports which had been enjoying zero or reduced customs duties thus effectively pushing Zimbabwean products, especially textiles and clothing items, out of the South African market.” 

Nobody can deny that corruption and failed economic structural adjustment programmes distressed the Zimbabwean economy in the 1990s. However, some part of the distress can also be understood in terms of the trade relationship between South Africa and Zimbabwe. This is especially so in the textiles and clothing sectors. 

It is now well known that the collapse of the 1990s economy in Zimbabwe is part of the background to its politically expedient land reform programme and to the greater economic collapse that was to hit Zimbabwe in the new millennium. Yet there is little media coverage on South Africa’s trade policy in the region. The masses are hardly given cause to think about how the country’s comparatively large economy impacts upon other countries in the region — leading to many undocumented workers seeking jobs in South Africa.

While trade policies influence experiences of wealth and poverty, South Africans continue to fail to discuss regional trade policies which may be beggaring neighbours and producing poor neighbourhoods. 

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