Only people power can save SA’s economy
26 November 2020
This past week tech entrepreneur Elon Musk surpassed Microsoft founder Bill Gates to become the world's second-richest person while the country of his birth, South Africa, got downgraded deeper into junk status by two of the big three ratings agencies.
Could Musk have achieved what he has if he’d stayed in South Africa? Will he be investing in South Africa any time soon? Not likely.
And nor will many other potential investors. Which should concern all of us, because South Africa’s economy – our lifeline – is in very serious trouble. We are heading for a sovereign debt crisis which as Finance Minister Tito Mboweni has pointed out will lead swiftly on to a banking crisis. Unemployment is at an all-time high of 43%. This is an unnatural level of joblessness and there is nothing Ramaphosa can say to investors to get that number down. Only real reform will do it and if ratings agencies don’t believe that’s going to happen, people shouldn’t either.
South Africans cannot sit this out and trust the ANC’s talk of economic recovery even as their actions - or lack thereof - spell economic suicide. For as long as the ANC controls SA’s economy, we’re heading straight for Zimbabwe. The only way to save our economy is to get economic decision-making power out of the hands of the ANC and into the hands of ordinary people.