THENEWSOUTHAFRICA
and damaged South Africa's potential. As a result of economic sanctions,
South Africa had pursued increasingly isolationist economic policies, and
confidence in the country's future had been undermined. Structural flaws,
such as protective tariffs and high wages in relationship to productivity,
meant that South African products were not competitive in international
markets. Professional and managerial skills were almost all in white
hands, because successive generations of black citizens had been denied
access to education and training. The high level of black unemployment
perpetuated poverty and crime. Finally, following the collapse of the So-
viet Union, changes in the global political economy, which emphasized
deregulation, liberalization, and privatization, imposed harsh constraints
on the new regime.l '
The Polity
Soon after his inauguration, Mandela completed the Government of
National Unity in terms of the interim constitution. As his first deputy
president, he appointed Thabo Mbeki rather than Cyril Ramaphosa, the
former trade union leader who had been a highly successful ANC negotia-
tor in 1993 and early 1994. That made Mbeki, aged fifty-one, heir-appar-
ent to the seventy-six-year-old president. Son of a veteran ANC and Com-