South African monetary policy in the 1980s: Years of reform and foreign financial aggression

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Abstract
The decade of the 1980s opened with an agenda of monetary reform that had only just begun to be put into effect in accordance with the recommendations issued in stages by the De Kock Commission from 1978 onwards. The thoroughgoing reforms, difficult of introduction at the best of times, were attempted in a climate of worldwide financial instability which was rendered more acute for South Africa by the active hostility of the United States and its allies, as manifested in the financial area by the cancellation of credits, a ban on investment, and trade boycotts. The exigencies of the anti-terrorist campaign in Namibia and the Angolan War of 1975–1987 placed a further heavy burden on the country's resources and strained its finances. In these circumstances the monetary authorities needed somehow to dovetail the reform programme with policy measures dictated by the exceptional circumstances. Some reforms, indeed, had to be reversed and others were never completed.

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