Comment
Cyril’s
twilight days?
Get in touch
@LeonLouw3
[email protected]
www.miningmirror.co.za
A
fter President Cyril Ramaphosa’s
State of the Nation Address in early
February, followed by Finance Minister
Tito Mboweni’s budget speech more
recently, it took two sober voices to bring me
back down to earth. Ramaphosa and Mboweni
are both exceptionally gifted speakers with lots of
charisma, and they have the ability to make the
worst of times feel like the best of times. My initial
feeling was that South Africa is back on track,
until I listened to economist Dr Azar Jammine and
political analyst Aubrey Matshiqi at the Afrisam
2019 National Budget Breakfast held the morning
after Mboweni’s speech.
Their predictions were not encouraging.
According to Jammine, what Ramaphosa is
promising does not make sense and the figures
just don’t add up. Sadly, the economy won’t recover
overnight and might even get worse before it gets
better.
The so-called investment boom is unlikely to
kick-start the fragile economy while Eskom and
other SOEs continue to drag the country further
into the red. Jammine says there is a real danger
that Moody’s will downgrade South Africa’s
investment status in future, which will be an
additional shock to the system.
But it was Matshiqi’s comments that caused the
most gasps. His prediction that Ramaphosa might
not be the president for too long after the national
elections in May, will have most business people
invested in the country grasping for any sort of
heart medication. Most ANC members and South
Africans believe that Ramaphosa is vital for the
resuscitation of the South African economy, right?
Wrong, says Matshiqi.
Most ANC members oppose his policies and
will vote him out at the slightest opportunity. Not
only that, but other interest groups, especially the
labour unions, will continue putting a spoke in the
president’s plans. “So even if he survives his first
five years in office, he will be the weakest president
ever, as he will always have to look over his
shoulder for new enemies,” Matshiqi said.
On reflection, Matshiqi is right. The ANC
following is just too wide-ranging to ever allow
South Africa to move forward. One movement
Corruption has been
institutionalised, and it is
too late to prevent
the rot.
alone cannot house such opposing groups
and ideologies as free marketeers, capitalists,
communists, and unionists. One cannot help but
feel that the ANC has run its course. The core
won’t hold, and the much-celebrated ‘party of the
people’ will eventually tear right down the middle.
And maybe it will be Ramaphosa’s disposal that
prompts the split.
While the business world applauds Ramaphosa’s
and Mboweni’s reforms, a large group of the
president’s own party members are plotting his
downfall. Corruption has been institutionalised,
and it is too late to prevent the rot. Ramaphosa
won’t save the ANC or the country. No matter how
noble his intentions are and irrespective of what
the nation wants, his fate is in the hands of others,
and among them are his fiercest opponents.
People like Ramaphosa, Mboweni, Gordhan,
and Manuel know what to do to fix the broken
economy, but their efforts are continuously
undermined by dark forces within the party itself.
Until the ANC rids itself of these saprophytes, or
splits in two, South Africa will be stuck in a state of
torpor forever.
Leon
Editor
APRIL 2019 MINING MIRROR [1]