A spoon (less) of sugar could sweeten budget
When Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan steps up to the podium this week to deliver his 2017 budget, he will carry the weight of expectation of a cash-strapped nation on his shoulders
It's not the stuff that radical 21st-century economic transformation will be built on, but one piece by Rudyard Kipling contains pearls of wisdom still useful today. "If you can keep your head when all about you/ Are losing theirs and blaming it on you," Kipling wrote in 1895. "If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,/ But make allowance for their doubting too;/ If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,/ Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,/ Or being hated, don't give way to hating ..." If was presented as a rousing letter to his son John. It was inspired by Leander Starr Jameson, whose failed invasion of the Transvaal republic set in motion events that led to the bloody South African War of 1899-1902. Regardless of its origins, it reminds those under extreme duress to be stoic. And Gordhan, caught between the lofty populist promises of the state of the nation address and the brutal reality of a possible ratings downgrade come the June review, is under extraordinary ...
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