As the South African economy emerges from the downturn induced by COVID-19, policy makers are concerned with recovery, reconstruction, and transformation. This paper focuses on the recovery from the severely depressed levels of economic activity that occurred in April 2020. However, before considering the period after the economic trough of April 2020, a mention of economic conditions prior to the pandemic is worthwhile. In brief, economic performance was terrible by almost any metric. Furthermore, economic performance had been poor since 2008, with evidence pointing to ongoing deterioration culminating in the fourth quarter of 2019, when per capita GDP contracted, unemployment ticked upwards to its highest level since 1994, productivity declined, and inequality worsened. The striking difficulties of the South African economy in avoiding/absorbing shocks--whether internally generated, such as shocks to electricity supply, or externally generated, such as changes in terms of trade or investor sentiment in relation to emerging markets--have been an integral part of this disappointing economic performance over time. In short, the situation prevailing prior to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic was one of economic weakness. Beginning from this position of weakness, the economic shock related to COVID-19 was enormous, likely the largest single economic shock in the history of South Africa. According to official statistics, GDP in the second quarter of 2020 was approximately 17% below the level registered in the second quarter of 2019. In assessing this shock, it is important to recall that GDP is a flow concept. One can, in principle, consider the volume of flow over any arbitrary period: a day, a week, a month, a quarter, a semester, a year, and so forth. The lockdown associated with COVID-19 precipitated an extraordinarily rapid decline in economic activity. Indeed, the available analytics and data point to a trough in economic activity, or flow value of GDP, at less than 70% of the level that would have pertained in the absence of the pandemic, or a greater than 30% decline in the flow rate of GDP (Arndt et al 2020). If we accept a 17% reduction as the average flow rate of GDP over the quarter and we accept that the economic shock related to COVID-19 was unprecedently rapid and drove a decline in the flow value of GDP of much more than 17% at the trough (which probably occurred sometime in late April or early May), then we must also accept a rapid recovery in economic activity in May and June in order to achieve an average decline of 17% over the quarter. Furthermore, this relatively rapid recovery continued. GDP in the third quarter of 2020 was "only" about 6% below the levels recorded for the third quarter of 2019, with the corresponding figure for the fourth quarter at about 4%. Other figures, including recent ones, broadly support this basic story. For example, retail sales in February 2021 were up 2.4% year-on-year, with the previous two months, January and December, having registered only a slight decline year-onyear. Correspondingly, manufacturing production and sales were down by 2.1% in February 2021 year-on-year. A few broad observations emerge from this history and the available data. First, the South African economy has exhibited more resilience to the COVID-19 shock than performance up to December 2019 might have led one to expect. In Mexico, for example, the distance between fourth quarter GDP in 2020 and that in 2019 was greater than for the same comparison in South Africa. At the same time, Mexico registered close to twice as many deaths related to COVID-19 per million population as South Africa. Second, multiplier effects are important. As discussed in Arndt et al (2020), multiplier effects accounted for the bulk of the initial economic contraction. However, they also operate positively, buoying the recovery experienced to date and bringing economic activity back towards the levels of 2019. Third, while having GDP about 4% down year-on-year is much better than the 17% decline observed in the second quarter, 4% down is still a deep recession by ordinary standards. While some sectors are producing at close to levels observed in the fourth quarter of 2019, others are more strongly affected. The incidence of these depressed levels of economic activity remains likely to be tilted toward lower-income households, which are more vulnerable to begin with. Overall, there remains substantial slack in the economy, multiplier effects still apply, and many households remain deeply vulnerable to severe economic hardship. Finally, prospects for economic growth remain circumscribed by the pandemic over the near term. The experience of India in April and May 2021 provides a stark warning of the social and economic implications of easing public health restrictions too soon. These public health restrictions constrain the pandemic but also limit the potential for further growth/recovery, at least until a significant share of the South African population has been vaccinated. This milestone may be obtained sometime in the first quarter of 2022. Hence, the 'recovery period' looks likely to extend for an additional nine months or more. To analyse recovery, we model policy impacts over four quarters. However, the distinguishing feature of recovery policies is not the time horizon over which they will run; rather it is in how quickly they can be implemented and take effect. Recovery is not a stage that has to be completed before reconstruction and transformation can begin. Instead, it is a process that will morph into reconstruction over time. We therefore confine our modelling to measures that have been proposed and which, in our judgement, could be implemented quickly. Simulations examine COVID-19 income support interventions to households considered by the government of South Africa under alternative financing options. All scenarios are run from the fourth quarter of 2020 to the third quarter of 2021. The most aggressive option, funded by reduced government savings, adds 2% to GDP (at market prices) over the period of observation, i.e. the year to the third quarter of 2021 relative to a scenario with no intervention. Less aggressive options contribute significantly less, due to counter balancing multiplier effects. Thus, financing matters. If the most aggressive intervention is financed by raising taxes of the top decile, a 0.7% increase in GDP is achieved. The reason for the lower impact, despite the full amount of income support being disbursed, is that highincome households will spend less, in order to pay for higher taxation. All intervention plans are strongly progressive. Further, even in the most aggressive scenario financed by reduced government savings, the government debt-to-GDP ratio declines, as higher GDP and higher tax collections more than fully offset the increment to government debt. These are important results. The paper concludes that the South African government has been justified in considering and implementing aggressive intervention policies. Maintenance of these policies is appropriate as long as public health measures to restrain spread of COVID-19 also constrain economic activity. Looking forward, and assuming vaccines will allow return to more normal behaviour either towards the end of 2021 or in early 2022, government needs to consider tapering of extraordinary COVID-19 support programs. More importantly, attention needs to be devoted now to kindling and maintaining much more rapid economic growth rates than have been attained over the past dozen years. If there is a silver lining to this terrible pandemic, it most plausibly lies in the creation of the policy space to enact measures and reforms that lead to equitable, sustainable, and much more rapid economic growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]