South Africa’s post-covid recovery would have to be ‘state-led’ and would involve expanding public employment and increasing investment in public infrastructure, said President Cyril Ramaphosa.
He was responding to questions on the country’s economic recovery during a virtual meeting of the National Assembly.
‘I have often said we need to look at the post-Covid economic landscape as being equivalent to a post-war economic landscape,’ he said.
‘The state has to play a critical role. Even your more conservative countries in the world are saying the state now needs to play its role.’
Fin24 reported that the president said that state had to ‘look at’ how the market was functioning and structured, and whether ‘previous policies’ still held up, or would need changing.
‘That is precisely what we are now looking at in government.’
The report noted that while the president’s reply was ‘short on details’, he said the creation of jobs must now be the state’s key aim, and that jobs would be created by expanding public employment and upping investment in public infrastructure.
The presidency would bring together funders, policy makers, state-owned enterprises, academics and the private sector next week to look at investment opportunities in infrastructure.
‘We should see infrastructure investment as a mobiliser of growth.’
Ramaphosa’s remarks came as the death toll in South Africa reached 1 737, with 83 890 positive cases, and 44 920 recoveries.
Economic Freedom Fighters leader Julius Malema accused Ramaphosa of putting profits before lives by easing Covid-19 lockdown restrictions.
He said: ‘We are more than convinced that we are not following any scientific advice. You are following business to maximise profits all the time. You are sitting comfortably in your home and you tell children to go to school. Do you have any advice how many people are going to die of this pandemic?’
News24 reported that Gauteng Premier David Makhura said his government might argue for closing some sectors of the economy should infections become uncontrollable.
He predicted that the country’s economic hub would be in the midst of the pandemic’s surge within the next two months, and he expected it to be ‘tough’.
Former finance minister Trevor Manuel’s mother, Philma, died of Covid-19 yesterday. She had turned 94 on Sunday.
The African National Congress in the Western Cape said Philma Manuel was a garment worker who was widowed when her husband died in 1969. At the time, Trevor Manuel was 13. She raised Manuel and his sisters, Pamela, Beryl and Renecia, as a single parent.
In other virus-related news
- The BBC reported that Kings College London researchers warned that social media platforms such as Facebook and YouTube could present a health risk to the Britain because they were spreading conspiracy theories about coronavirus. They said in a paper published in the journal Psychological Medicine, that people who got their news from social media sources were more likely to break lockdown rules;
- Peru’s number of confirmed infections, at 240 908, now exceeds Italy’s, which for a long time was Europe’s worst-affected country. Peru now has the second-highest number of cases after Brazil’s total of almost a million. Peru’s death toll stands at 7 257, still far behind Brazil’s more than 45 000. Latin America is the current epicentre of the pandemic, with more than four million confirmed infections – the worst-hit countries are Brazil, Peru and Chile; and
- Globally, there are 8.3m recorded cases, with more than 448 000 deaths.