Macroeconomic/Financial Profile of South AfricaAny attempt to explain South Africa's recent economic history must begin with a discussion of apartheid. Beginning in the mid-20th century and continuing until 1990, the National Party (NP) government engaged in the systematic oppression of non-white South Africans, in what became known as the apartheid system. To understand the net economic consequences of apartheid, consider the graph in the lower right corner of Figure 1 showing real GDP per capita in US dollars at constant PPPs from 1980 to 2008. Looking at the graph, we see that despite some rare After rapid growth, the South African economy generally suffered negative growth in per capita income between 1980 and 1993. A 1997 Economist Intelligence report Unit (EIU) provides a possible explanation for this trend. From the mid-1970s until the early 1990s, the South African economy suffered an almost continuous decline in domestic investment. This fact, combined with fiscally conservative government policies, has forced the economy to rely increasingly on private consumption to stimulate growth. However, private consumption has been unable to do so due to high interest rates, high levels of personal debt and negligible employment growth. While true, the above explanation does not discuss the root cause of South Africa's economic difficulties during this period, namely apartheid. . In the mid-1980s, growing international opposition to apartheid led to the involvement of the United States, among other countries, in a disinvestment campaign against South Africa (Knight 1990). U.S. participation included passage of the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act in 1986, which limited investment... half the paper... unemployment, according to a 2008 EIU report, recent growth in the manufacturing sector and service sectors increased demand for skilled workers, while declines in agriculture and mining reduced demand for unskilled labor. As a result, South Africa finds itself with a large amount of unskilled labor. As I have shown above, South Africa's economic performance in recent decades can largely be explained in the context of South Africa's political transition out of apartheid. In the years since the end of apartheid, the ANC's reform policies have been very successful in stimulating economic growth, promoting stability, and overseeing the transformation of the South African economy from one traditionally focused on mining and to agriculture to a modern economy, in which manufacturing and financial services contribute a larger share of GDP.