South Africa Just Got Dumber

Rob Davies: Cadre Mentor

A new economics course has just been created at Wits university.

I think the quotes off Fin24 sum it up best:

“South Africa does not have the skills necessary to create independent, critical economic thinking, a University of London economist said on Monday.”

“South African economists have in general continued to be wedded to this orthodoxy that has dominated over the past few years,” Professor Ben Fine said at the launch of an industrial policy course at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg.”

“The country is not in a position to train and provide for alternative ways of thinking in terms of making alternative policies for the South African context.”

Trade and Industry Minister Rob Davies said the course to be run at Wits University was launched because of an awareness that the country lacked the skills and capacity for economic thinking.

“Much of teaching and research in economics has too narrow a focus on mainstream theories and economic models,” he said.

“The reality is that the great recession we passed through, and the global economic crisis we are passing through in various forms, has revealed the inadequacy of many of the central propositions of mainstream economic theory.”

But wait, here’s the real kicker…

“Courses like this are going to develop the cadres who are going to spearhead our economic development.”

Ah, the giveaway right at the end! What is posing as a fresh, new, vibrant way of economic thinking is really just old mercantilist-marxist-statist-Keynesian-protectionist-big government-spendaroo economics repackaged and sold to gullible students as “education”.

Sad really.

It’s hard to better one of the readers commenting on the article…

“Courses like this are going to develop the cadres”… say no more. Let the political indoctrination begin.”