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 moved to South Africa during the democratic transition and subsequently became a key figure in debates about post-apartheid labour policy.
[1] During the democratic transition, she helped draft the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP), which became the ANC's flagship economic and social policy after it entered government in 1994.
[1] Makgetla was chief director for fiscal policy in the office, where, according to Patrick Bond, she was the leader of Naidoo's "progressive flank" in subsequent disputes about the detail and implementation of the RDP.
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".
[1] Makgetla left the civil service in 2000 and became coordinator for fiscal, monetary, and public-sector policy at the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), which was the largest labour federation in the country as well as the ANC's Tripartite Alliance partner.
[9] Now on the opposite side of public-sector wage negotiations, she criticised the government for "subordinating labour relations to a declining budget" and for falling victim to the "ideology of a contracting state and managerialism".
[12] 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.
[15] Although Makgetla initially said that she was leaving Cosatu to return to Naledi,[15] it was announced later in 2006 that she had been appointed to a position in Mbeki's kitchen cabinet.
[25] 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.