Neva Makgetla

Neva Seidman Makgetla (born 1956) is an American–South African economist who is currently attached to Trade & Industrial Policy Strategies, an independent think tank based in Pretoria. She rose to prominence as the head of the policy unit at the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) between 2000 and 2006. She was a member of the National Executive Committee of the ANC, Cosatu's Tripartite Alliance partner, from 2019 to 2022.

During apartheid, Makgetla was an academic economist with close ties to the exiled African National Congress (ANC). She moved to South Africa during the democratic transition and subsequently became a key figure in debates about post-apartheid labour policy. Before her seven-year stint at Cosatu, she was an economist on the Reconstruction and Development Programme, both during the development of the policy and during its implementation through Jay Naidoo's ministerial office.

Elsewhere in the civil service, she has worked for the Department of Labour, the Department of Public Service and Administration, the Development Bank of Southern Africa, and the Presidency under Thabo Mbeki. Most recently, she was head of economic policy in the Department of Economic Development from 2010 until 2015, when she joined TIPS. Her primary economic interests are in industrial policy, value-chain analysis, and employment creation.

Early life and career Makgetla was born in 1956 or 1957 in the United States, though she was later naturalised as a South African citizen. She is Jewish. Her parents – legal scholar Robert B. Seidman and dependency theorist and economist Ann Seidman – were American academics who taught at several African universities. In 1973,

Returning to the United States, Makgetla completed graduated with honours with a bachelor's degree from Harvard University in 1978. She undertook postgraduate studies in economics at the Hochschule für Ökonomie in East Berlin, where she completed a master's in 1980 and a PhD in 1982.

Post-apartheid career

Civil service Under the ANC government from 1994, Makgetla worked in the RDP office, led by RDP Minister Jay Naidoo. After the RDP office was disbanded in March 1996, Makgetla briefly served as director of research in the Department of Labour.

In 1997, she joined the Department of Public Service and Administration as deputy director-general for remuneration. In that capacity, she was chief negotiator for the state in public-sector wage bargaining. According to Makgetla, her position in the department become uncomfortable after Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi was appointed as Minister of Public Service and Administration in 1999: while Fraser-Moleketi appeared to have a mandate to "get tough" on the public-sector unions in order to reduce the public wage bill, Makgetla's critics said that she was "soft on labour", both in wage talks and on the matter of public-sector retrenchments, with some going so far as to accuse her of being a union "mole".

Amid deteriorating relations between Cosatu and the ANC government under President Thabo Mbeki, Makgetla was a prominent face of the union's attack on Mbeki's Growth, Employment and Redistribution (GEAR) programme, which had replaced the RDP; in 2001, she compared GEAR to a self-imposed structural adjustment programme and said that it was creating a "deep structural crisis", cutting social services while failing to create employment. She was also strongly associated with Cosatu's anti-privatisation campaign, with Minister of Public Enterprises Jeff Radebe reportedly identifying her as a key ideologue (though Radebe denied this). the South African Democratic Teachers' Union, for example, said that the personalised focus on Makgetla was "racist". Although Makgetla initially said that she was leaving Cosatu to return to Naledi, and then as lead economist for development planning and implementation. While in that role, in March 2010, she was appointed to the economic development advisory panel established by Ebrahim Patel to advise his Ministry of Economic Development on job creation, economic trends, and development matters. Later the same year, she left the Development Bank to accept a full-time position in Patel's department as deputy director-general for economic policy, a position which she held until 2015.

Independent research In November 2015, Makgetla joined Trade & Industrial Policy Strategies (TIPS) as a senior economist. She managed the think tank's trade and industry programme. While at TIPS, she was involved in a number of high-profile policy initiatives. In 2018, Finance Minister Nhlanhla Nene appointed her to his nine-member VAT review panel, chaired by Ingrid Woolard and tasked with investigating options for making VAT in South Africa more progressive. The following year, she was appointed to the inaugural National Minimum Wage Commission, although the Business Day reported that organised business had opposed her appointment due to her former links to Cosatu. In October 2019, she was one of four individuals co-opted onto the ANC National Executive Committee, the party's top executive organ; she was a member until the committee's term ended in December 2022.

Personal life Makgetla married Sophonia "Zeph" Makgetla in 1977. They had met and fallen in love while she was in Lusaka on her gap year; he was an Umkhonto we Sizwe operative in exile and was appointed as an ambassador after the end of apartheid. They have two daughters: Tumi, who is a political scientist, and Anita, who is in advertising.