Vella Pillay | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | 8 October 1923 |
| Died | 29 July 2004 (aged 80) Highgate, London, United Kingdom |
| Occupation | Economist |
| Known for | Anti-apartheid activism |
| Spouse |
Patricia (Patsy) Truebig
(m. 1948) |
| Children | 2 (including Anand Pillay) |
Vella Pillay (8 October 1923 – 29 July 2004) was a South African international economist and a founding member of the British Anti-Apartheid Movement. He was a member of the South African Communist Party and coordinated the party's overseas activities from London when it was banned by the South African government. As a chairman of the editorial committee of Anti-Apartheid News, he wrote extensively on the South African economy under the apartheid regime.
Pillay studied at the University of the Witwatersrand before receiving graduate degrees from the London School of Economics and University of London. He returned to South Africa in 1992 before the first non-racial elections in 1994 and coordinated with other economists as a part of the African National Congress's (ANC) Macroeconomics (MERG) to produce a forward looking framework for South Africa's macroeconomic policies. The report, Making Democracy Work: A Framework for Macroeconomic Policy in South Africa (1993), however, was rejected by the African National Congress.