Economic Empowerment Policies and Economic Growth in the Post-Apartheid South Africa – A Cointegration and Granger Causality

Abstract

After the first democratic elections in 1994 there was a need to develop policies, strategies, laws and other means to address huge inequalities of wealth and economic options that the long-term apartheid policies had created. An economic transformation strategy formed part of government’s strategic approach to ensure accelerated and shared growth in South Africa. Empowerment was characterized by giving access to economic resources through entrepreneurship as well as affirmative action policies. A cointegration approach on a time series during the period 1995 to 2009 is employed in this study. The results of our analysis prove that racially biased policies have a negative impact on the economy of South Africa in the long run.

DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2014.v5n10p268