Nhlanhla Nene is not a Financial God
Thursday morning was characterized by the usual hype of South African society, in which any move made by Zuma is met by commonplace outrage, matched with rhetoric of shock irrespective of why Zuma made the decision. It’s slightly amusing how Nene quite literally became an overnight sensation because he suddenly provided civil society with another reason to blame Zuma.
Twitter roared and newspapers flew off the shelves, with my local Indian shop being sold out of the Cape Times by 9am. I wondered what on earth happened and most of all why everyone was so over-dramatically upset. Sure, the rand just sunk to an all time low but as I looked around me, ISIS wasn’t in town, children weren’t dying (as they are in Palestine) and a Tsunami certainly had not happened.
Never being one to blindly jump on the bandwagon of popular opinion, I decided to look at the bigger picture and what it means for the future of South Africa. Apparently people are upset because of some cooked up story that Nene was fired for refusing Zuma a $4 Billion private jet and some SAA saga. However, let’s please look at the facts and not grapevine fallacies because this whole situation will benefit South Africa in the long run.
Understandably, people are upset that the rand has fallen because it means that imports from the USA will cost more. Whilst I personally cannot understand why anyone would actually want to support the US economy (you know with their tendencies towards war, genocide, theft of oil, Guantanamo Bay, Donald Trump etc), it is clear that there is a large discontent and concern about the impact that the costs of imports will have on the economy.
Upon the news being released and the public uproar, local investors immediately withdrew by shifting their investments abroad whilst foreign investors also withdrew. It is well known, that investors are highly influenced by public hype and opinion. However, before I blame everyone for the rand falling, I will just say “let’s leave that angle for another time”.