What can economists do with South Africa's SAMs?

The South African Central Economic Advisory Service has recently published a report containing social accounting matrices for the economy as a whole, and for eight planning regions. This article provides a critical evaluation of these SAMs.

The Black states are includes in the SAMs, and the national SAM identifies seven income categories, four race groups, and ten occupational categories. Interindustry transactions are portrayed in a twenty‐four sector inter‐industry matrix. The regional SAM includes an analysis of racial incomes, and interregional flows of transfers from households, and trade and government transfers. A paradoxical result is that African migrant workers, who often hold the lowest occupations, appear in the top decile of the distribution of African incomes in the national SAM. The SAMs do not identify rural households, African households, in the rapidly growing fringe settlements around the metropolitan regions, and informal sector activities, and the article argues that these SAMs provide a snapshot of the economy which is severely out of focus.

The SAMs are based on a 1978 input‐output table and 1980 expenditure patterns. Since then changes in wage levels, the strength of Black unions, and the exchange rate of the Rand may have caused significant alterations in certain coefficients in the economy, possibly making the SAMs unsuitable for modelling policy changes.     

Can the circle be squared? An enquiry into shale gas mining in South Africa's Karoo

The prospect of ‘fracking’ for shale gas in South Africa's Karoo has generated heated exchanges in public forums and in the media. This article seeks to understand why common ground in the debate has proved to be so elusive. The article divides the parties to the impasse into three camps and examines the ethical positions which seem to inform each faction's standpoint. The article finds that the tensions between the main protagonists’ positions are due to two related ethical ‘faultlines’. The first revolves around the inherent incompatibility of consequentialism with moral absolutism. The second relates to tensions between nature as an instrumental good, and an ethic that treats nature as an intrinsic good. The discussion considers the merits of cost–benefit analysis and whether, at the very least, exploration for shale gas should be permitted. The article concludes by weighing up the preconditions for a rapprochement being reached between the contending factions.     

Mineral wealth – ‘in the name of morafe’? Community control in South Africa's ‘Platinum Valley’

Direct control of mineral resource wealth by communities in resource-endowed regions is advocated as a panacea to conflict and fundamental towards attainment of self-determination and local autonomy. Based on the study conducted in Royal Bafokeng and Bakgatla Ba Kgafela, the two prominent, platinum-rich traditional communities in South Africa's North West Province, this article reveals that, although mineral wealth in South Africa's platinum-endowed communities such as Royal Bafokeng is reportedly distributed ‘in the name of morafe’ (‘community’ in Setswana), inadequate participation produces polarised local priorities and tensions at the grassroots level. Community control of mineral wealth is thus likely to paradoxically generate conflict and exclusion at the traditional community level, particularly in contexts where participation in mineral wealth-engendered community development is championed by traditional leaders through customary-derived spaces of local engagement.     

Public works programme and primary health care in South Africa: Creating jobs for health systems strengthening?

This paper examines employment and skills training for community caregivers within the expanded public works programme in South Africa. The paper argues that, as currently conceptualised, the skills and learnership programmes for community caregivers fail to take full advantage of the prevailing labour market realities. Therefore, the paper argues for strategic reconceptualisation of the programme to include learnerships for community caregivers that impart more mid-level to higher-level skills to meet current and future labour market demands particularly in primary health care. This, it is argued, will address the scarcity of skills in the health sector of the economy. Furthermore, the proposed programme will simultaneously have positive impacts on unemployment, the primary health care system and the socio-economic well-being of community caregivers.     

Did children's education matter? Family migration as a mechanism of human capital investment: evidence from nineteenth‐century Bohemia

This article analyses the rural–urban migration of families in the Bohemian region of Pilsen in 1900. Using a new 1,300‐family dataset from the 1900 population census, the role of children's education in rural–urban migration is examined. The findings indicate that families migrated to the city such that the educational attainment of their children would be maximized, and that there is a positive correlation between family migration and children being apprentices in urban areas. The results suggest that rural–urban migration was powered not only by the exploitation of rural–urban wage gaps but also by aspirations to engage in human capital investment.