SA's minister of finance Tito Mboweni is a devout neoliberalist, similar to New Zealand's finance minister Roger Douglas who in the 80s followed neoliberal economic policies nicknamed Rogernomics. Here's what happened to the people of NZ. [TL;DR: it ended in tears]

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Firstly, the gap between the wealthy and the poor is growing faster in New Zealand than most developed countries in the world. This is a direct result of Rogernomics

(Sidebar: South Africa is the mos unequal country in the world. Coincidence? Methinks not)

Anyway, neoliberalism basically implies"deregulation" - i.e reducing the role of the State in the economy & replacing it with mainly foreign money, a.k.a "investors"

The NZ treasury drafted a document on how to remove the government from the economy by selling off state assets

The selling off of State-Owned assets led to a sudden deluge of foreign capital which exposed businesses and workers to the unregulated predatory practices of private capital and the "free markets".

Also...

These neoliberal policies are the same exact garbage peddled by, and shoved down the throats of South Africans by Cyril Ramaphosa’s administration and trumpeted by his ministers Mboweni and Pravin Gordhan and President Cyril Ramaphosa

Back to NZ. Overseas investors were not interested in building factories and manufacturing goods. They wanted in on the finance, the banking and gambling in the stock market. As a result, 76000 manufacturing jobs were lost between in the 5 years between 1987 and 1992

State-owned enterprises shed jobs too: the Electricity Corporation laid off 3000 people; 4000 by the Coal Corporation; Forestry Corporation: 5000; and the New Zealand Post 8000. That's 20 thousand jobs in a country that at the time had fewer people than Cape Town has today

The NZ economy shifted from industry to services with foreign restaurant conglomerates coming in, which led to a new "café culture" which was naturally only enjoyed by the wealth. As for the rest of the population, well, they kept losing their livelihoods

Over 15 years since the "opening up" of the economy, New Zealand's youth suicide rate grew sharply into one of the highest in the West. Yet, advocates of neoliberalism kept on insisting their policies were successful (not dissimilar to the era of Thabo Mbeki in South Africa)

Violent and other crimes increased significantly. The number of New Zealanders living in poverty grew by over 35% between 1989 and 1992 while child poverty doubled from 14% in 1982 to 29% in 1994, along with significant worsening in health standards among the working and middle

Between 1985 and 1992, NZ's economy grew by 4.7% (at times having negative growth) while it's it's peers, OECD countries, were growing at about 30%

Between 1984 and 1993, New Zealand's inflation rate averaged 9% per year, the credit rating was downgraded twice, while foreign debt quadrupled. Between '86 and '92, the unemployment rate went from 3.6% to 11%

Yet the NZ government and it's media propaganda cheerleaders kept on insisting these were the best economic policies ever.

However, this was, and still is advertised as an "economic miracle". Why? Because throughout all this, the wealthy continued to do better and better. The wealthy love Rogernomics. Of course they do