DST/NRF SARChI in Economic Development in the School of Built Environment and Development Studies

Invites you to a seminar by Professor Vishnu Padayachee

• Title: “Shadows of Liberation”: Making ANC economic policy in the transition to democracy.
• Date: 24 October 2018
• Time: 11:45
• Venue: Room 808, Level 8, Shepstone Building Howard College

Abstract: Shadows of liberation is centered around questions of how the ANC came in the 1990s to do a dramatic U-turn on economic and social policy and to plump for an essentially market driven neo-liberal approach. Shadows of liberation expresses that the ANC leadership and Mandela’s economic policy choice was based on his and the ANC’s judgement that there was no alternative to the neo-liberalism that had dominated global policy debate since the early 1980s. Shadows of liberation eschews both singular and conspiratorial narratives about why certain economic and social policies were decided upon and adopted in this period. The book locates the period of ANC economic and social policy making in the post-1990 era against a wider historically contextualised canvass of ANC policy-making since the 1940’s.

Bio: Professor Vishnu Padayachee is currently a Distinguished Professor and Derek Schrier and Cecily Cameron Chair in Development Economics in the School of Economic and Business Sciences at the University of the Witwatersrand. He is also a Research Associate and member of the Steering Committee of the Wits-based Southern Centre for Inequality Studies. He also holds the position of Professor Emeritus in the School of Built Environment and Development Studies at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. He has been a member of the Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf) since 21 September 2017; and a member of the Royal Society of South Africa (MRSSAf) from 24 October 2012. He was inducted into the prestigious Johns Hopkins University “Society of Scholars” on 11 April 2016.Prof Padayachee was awarded an honorary doctorate in Economics (D.Econ, hc) by Rhodes University on 6th April 2018. He received his PhD from the University of Natal in Economics and Economic History in 1989. He has authored/edited several books, written over 30 chapters in books and published 95 articles in accredited academic journals. His research covers a number of disciplinary fields within the broad themes of political economy, economic and social history, and development. His current research interests include monetary history, theory, and policy in South Africa