The South African economy needs more of the medicine it received in the late 1990s to achieve sustainable growth and not a boom-bust cycle, says SA Reserve Bank governor Lesetja Kganyago. Kganyago was an official in the National Treasury when the new democratic government administered its controversial Growth Employment and Redistribution policy to the economy, cutting spending to rein in debt, liberalising exchange controls, and laying the groundwork for inflation targeting. GEAR led to SA's most sustained period of economic growth and laid the basis for the country to weather two emerging market crises and the global financial crisis of 2008. But GEAR was politically unpopular with trade unions and the Left, which viewed it as an assault on the working class and on progressive, social democratic policy ideals.
