Given the loathing of many on the left of SA politics for the IME, this year’s Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection (Mistra) annual lecture should be an interesting spectacle. The timing could not have been better: the IMF is releasing R9-trillion in emergency funding to help countries recover from Covid-19, of which SA will receive R65bn.

 

The presentation on August 31 will be by Jonathan Ostry, deputy director of the IMF’s Asia Pacific department, who was part of the team in the aftermath of the financial crisis of 2008 that started questioning the principles of what the late British economist John Williamson termed the “Washington Consensus”.