THICK END OF THE WEDGE
PETER BRUCE: SA can avoid going cap in hand to IMF
I once heard an Italian entrepreneur explain inequality via the simple adage that the rich invest smarter than the poor. He was talking about Italy, but his point was that the working class get poor advice from poor fund managers because they think they can’t afford the good ones. I was reminded about what he said while reading a brilliant essay on the acute policy dilemmas President Cyril Ramaphosa faces in the April issue of a UK magazine called Standpoint, written by the former Oxford don and Rhodes scholar RW Johnson. Johnson is a polarising figure in SA but he is not to be ignored. His work is affected by a profound disappointment with the ANC in government. His last book, How Long Will SA Survive?: The Looming Crisis, was a best-seller at home and in it he famously prophesied that it would not be long before we became so indebted (under then president Jacob Zuma) that we would need to ask the IMF or World Bank for rescue.That is still no fantasy, despite the fact that Moody’s,...
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