POINT OF ORDER
TIM COHEN: A scary path but no outcome is inevitable
Tim Cohen considers whether SA is on the same road as Zimbabwe and Venezuela
The junking of SA’s debt has forced even those disinclined to think sacrilegious thoughts to ponder whether this country could go the same way as Zimbabwe and Venezuela. I don’t think so, but there is no doubt that the danger of starting down a path towards economic disaster is more likely now than at any point since democracy. There are superficial comparison points. The land grab ideas that President Jacob Zuma now extols are similar to those early in Zimbabwe’s calamitous decline and they are being proposed for essentially the same reason. Like Robert Mugabe, Zuma sensed his political support ebbing to a dangerously low point so he pulled out the bazooka of political promises. In Venezuela, President Nicolas Maduro says he is engaged in an "economic war" stoked by Yankee imperialists. This idea is loosely related to the notion of a "radical economic transformation" so beloved of Zuma’s cronies, whose grasp of the simplest economic notions are seemingly a bridge too far.Venezuela ...
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