#1.) Mandela cleaned up the country’s monetary policy. Part of the new political paradigm included increasing administrative transparency at many levels. The modernization efforts Mandela oversaw at the South African Reserve Bank helped slash inflation from nearly 9.83 percent the year Mandela took office to 2.24 percent when he retired from office in 1999.
"Under the leadership of Mr. Mandela, South Africa made great strides in improving the overall quality of its institutions, which in turn has had a positive impact on the economy," wrote Shilan Shah, Africa analyst for Captial Economics, in a research note published Friday.
#2.) Mandela did not follow Robert Mugabe’s lead. Zimbabwe went through a similar, complicated transition from minority to majority rule, and many in South Africa considered following the pattern of land appropriation from white Zimbabweans under Mugabe. Starting just a couple of years before Mandela was elected, President Mugabe began land reforms that took white Zimbabwean farmers’ properties and granted them to political cronies. Mandela faced pressure to follow a similar plan in South Africa. Fortunately, he resisted. Mugabe’s land reform policy destroyed a huge segment of national agricultural productivity, scared away regional and international investment and sent inflation into four digits.
#3.) Mandela formed an alliance with trade unions that increased worker productivity and lowered unemployment. He oversaw a new relationship between the African National Congress, which he headed in the years before he became president, and the Congress for South African Trade Unions (COSATU). Remember, black South African suffered profound workplace discrimination under the racist policies of apartheid. Mandela worked with the unions to help boost employment opportunities for a segment of the population that needed to have more job opportunities in the new post-apartheid era. While this alliance between the ANC and COSATU is viewed by many as an impediment to jobs growth today, in the early '90s it was absolutely necessary to avoid social unrest linked to economic marginalization of low-wage black South African workers.
#4.) Mandela expressed ideological flexibility by eschewing hard-left economic theory and moving to the center. After Mandela was released from prison in 1990, his economic views were more closely aligned with those in Cuba and Venezuela today: heavy control of commercial activity by the state and complete state control over key industries. By 1994, Mandela was a Keynesian, rolling out the welcome mat to foreign investment while tightly directing industrial activity. Had Mandela held out on his earlier, more radical views, investment would have gone elsewhere. Mandela’s relaxing of his earlier stance on economics helped bring investment back to the country that had fled (or was forced to flee) during apartheid.