Through numerous interviews with politicians, business leaders and analysts, it examines the challenges and opportunities across key productive sectors – including agriculture, manufacturing, services, and mining – illustrative of the policy challenges that leaders face. It scrutinises the social grant and education systems to understand if South Africa has established mechanisms for people not only to escape destitution but be ready to be employed, and identifies steps that some of South Africa’s most notable entrepreneurs have taken to build world-class enterprises. Recognising the essential challenge to cultivate more employers to employ people, How South Africa Works concludes by offering an agenda and active steps for greater competitiveness for government, business and labour.
GREG MILLS is director of the Johannesburg-based Brenthurst Foundation. He is widely published on international affairs, development and security, an adviser to African governments, a regular columnist for local and international newspapers, and the author of the best-selling books Why Africa is Poor – and what Africans can do about it (2010) and, with Jeffrey Herbst, Africa’s Third Liberation (2012). In addition, in 2014, he published Why States Recover: Changing Walking Societies into Winning Nations – from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe.
JEFFREY HERBST is the 16th President of Colgate University, a leading liberal arts college in the United States, and has written extensively on political and international affairs. Dr Herbst started his career as a professor of politics and international affairs at Princeton University where he taught for 18 years. His primary research interests are in the politics of sub-Saharan Africa, the politics of political and economic reform and the politics of boundaries. He has served on the Advisory Board of the Brenthurst Foundation since 2005.