Dani Rodrik says that outward-orientation would improve South Africa’s growth:

South Africa has undergone a remarkable transformation since its democratic transition in 1994, but economic growth and employment generation have been disappointing. Most worryingly, unemployment is currently among the highest in the world. While the proximate cause of high unemployment is that prevailing wages levels are too high, the deeper cause lies elsewhere, and is intimately connected to the inability of the South African to generate much growth momentum in the past decade. High unemployment and low growth are both ultimately the result of the shrinkage of the non-mineral tradable sector since the early 1990s. The weakness in particular of export-oriented manufacturing has deprived South Africa from growth opportunities as well as from job creation at the relatively low end of the skill distribution. Econometric analysis identifies the decline in the relative profitability of manufacturing in the 1990s as the most important contributor to the lack of vitality in that sector.

The policy prescription is a bit fuzzy, however:

Prices, costs, and productivity are the main drivers of manufacturing production and employment. Therefore putting manufacturing on a permanently steeper trajectory will necessitate working on these same levers. In particular, it will require reversing the decline in relative profitability which the econometrics tells us has been the primary culprit for the sector’s misfortunes.

PDF here.