The New Economic Policy and Redistribution in Malaysia: A Model for Post-Apartheid South Africa?
Author: For Post-apartheid, South Africa, Gillian Hart.
Post-apartheid, For and Africa, South and Hart, Gillian. 1994. "The New Economic Policy and Redistribution in Malaysia: A Model for Post-Apartheid South Africa?." Transformation 23 44-59.
exceptional Since then, the pendulum has swung to a search for models from elsewhere in the world that post-apartheid South Africa might emulate. Malaysia has recently become a leading candidate. Few societies are as sharply defined in terms of racial categories- in this case, Malays, Chinese, and Indians- and still fewer have undertaken massive redistribution along racial/ethnic lines. The New Economic Policy, launched in 1970 with the purpose of increasing Malays ' share of the economy, has gone a long way towards accomplishing its goals. Concur-rent with racially-defined redistribution, the Malaysian economy has grown rapidly. In the face of this apparently dazzling success, it is not surprising that South Africans are increasingly being exhorted to 'look to Malaysia ' for solu-tions. There are, in feet, some real dangers in the way Malaysia and other exemplary cases are being held up as models for South Africa. The invocation of 'compara-tive models ' and 'international experience ' is often a means by which allegedly superior knowledge is used to preclude debate. These representations can alsoPublished: 1994Typ: journalArticleISSN: