Address by Mr. TT Mboweni, Governor of the South African Reserve Bank, UNISA, Department of Economics,  1. INTRODUCTIONFirst of all, let me thank the Department of Economics of UNISA for the pleasant invitation extended to me to take the honourary chair in Economics. It is indeed a great honour for me personally but also for my institution, the South African Reserve Bank. I have no doubt in my mind that one of the considerations for this invitation was to improve the relationship between this university and the central bank. Personally, I think that academics and public policy-makers need each other for the simple reason that their work is mutually reinforcing.I have chosen to speak tonight on the subject of "Globalisation and Policy-making in South Africa". As things turned out, when I was preparing this address, I discovered that I covered almost the same subject at Rand Afrikaans University on 25 October 2000. It is thus unavoidable that some of the material used here will overlap with the address at RAU. Maybe it goes to show how much the subject of globalisation is permanently in our minds.Definitions of globalisation abound in the literature of today. A 1994 OECD Jobs Study said, "Globalisation refers to an evolving pattern of cross-border activities of firms, involving international investment, trade and collaboration for product development, production and sourcing, and marketing. It is driven by firm strategies to exploit competitive advantages internationally, use favourable local inputs and infrastructure, and locate in final markets. These strategies are shaped by declining communication and transport costs, and rising R&D costs, macroeconomic trends and exchange rate fluctuations, and liberalisation of trade, investment and capital movements."1 In short, the internationalisation of trade and investment, growing international markets, the rapid development and use of information and communication technology (ICT), high mobility of skilled people, the growing trend towards flexible exchange rates, and the extremely influential role of money and capital markets characterise the economics of globalisation. The size of the figures involved in this process changes from day to day. But for the sake of focus and illustration, let me mention a few. In 1998, total foreign direct investment (FDI) was $693 billion and in 2000 it was $1,3 trillion. Africa’s share was a static $8 billion respectively. Most of the flows went into the developed countries: $483 billion and $1,005 trillion respectively.2 Between 1970 and 1997, "countries without exchange controls rose from 35 to 137" and the "ratio of exports to world output rose from 12 per cent to 17 per cent"3. Financial markets have increased in importance in numerous ways. Thirty years ago financial assets were seldom traded in the secondary market and were often held until maturity. Nowadays secondary market activity in financial instruments dwarfs world income. For instance, annual turnover on the 16 major industrial countries' stock markets rose sixfold from around US$ 5 trillion a decade ago to around $ 30 trillion at present. 2. PROTESTS AGAINST GLOBALISATIONWe are now all too familiar with the regularity of protests against globalisation. In London, Seattle, Davos, Genoa, Prague and many other cities around the world, anti-globalisation protests have turned violent, symptomatic of a growing anger and desperation by these organisations. But the process seems to be gaining momentum. The protests have at times focussed on the debt burden of emerging market countries, calling for its cancellation. But at the core of these protests, is a fundamental opposition to globalisation with the IMF, World Bank and the WTO attracting the fiercest opposition. It is unlikely that the globalisation momentum will be halted, but some of the issues raised by the protests must be listened to, studied and responded to.On a lighter note, a Peruvian author (quoted by Gouws) says, "fighting globalisation is rather like fighting against the metric system. You may not like it, but the costs o