Debate from ROAPE Volume 20 Number 58
World Bank: Some Lessons for South Africa

Orthodox structural adjustment policies, now imposed on nearly all of Africa and likely to be forced on a future South African government, will perform a double function so far as outside interests are concerned: they will help to safeguard the economic interests of both foreign capital and white ‘kith and kin’ in the region; and they will attempt to prevent experimentation with alternative policies and so reduce the ‘threat of a good example’ (Melrose, 1985) for the rest of the world.