Before the Covid-19 pandemic, SA was mired with low growth, structural unemployment, and high inequality. Weaknesses in electricity and transport infrastructure, a scarcity of skilled workers, constrained fiscal space, poor institutional governance, and consequent low confidence, reduced the country’s growth potential and ability to achieve its development goals. 

The pandemic worsened already muted economic prospects. Lockdowns and other restrictions were necessary but blunt health responses to limit the spread of the virus in the absence of other pharmaceutical interventions at the time...