Former Trade and Industry Minister Dr Rob Davies is urging the South African government, in which he served as a Cabinet Minister from 2009 to 2019, to implement a New Deal-style recovery programme to address the economic damage arising from both Covid-19 and more than a decade of economic drift. Speaking during a recent virtual launch of his new book, Davies cautioned that a retreat to austerity could result in a long and politically destabilising period of stagnation. The recovery effort, he said, had to be of a scale commensurate with the economic damage inflicted by the pandemic to avoid widening inequality and a deepening of poverty.
