As we enter 2020, I remind you again that South Africa’s economy under Cyril Ramaphosa’s African National Congress (ANC) is in a serious crisis. Anybody who reads about this country should be aware of the crisis we are in.
It’s an economic crisis we could have evaded – had government made rational decisions – fitting with the prerequisites for rapid economic growth. The economy would have been thriving along with other developing nations.
How South Africa got to 2019’s economic quagmire is widely known and documented. I’m one of the commentators who have written numerous times about the recipe that got us to this stagnation. To be frank, the destruction of the economy began under Jacob Zuma’s administration.
Before Zuma, under Thabo Mbeki and Nelson Mandela’s administration, the country experienced relatively higher levels of economic growth with lower levels of unemployment. It is crucial that we highlight this historical fact. Because people tend to forget that our economy wasn’t always the mess it is after 1994.
Rebooting the economy in 2020
As we enter 2020, we should come to terms that we cannot afford to dwell on the past; we have to learn from it, and move on. We should use our past, our history, as a guide into the future.