MAMOKETE LIJANE: Strong rand reveals market indicators not a barometer of societal success
An upbeat market amid the unrest shows how little the underlying architecture of the economy has changed since apartheid years
The last week was the most difficult period I can remember living through as an adult in SA. When a mass of people gathered at Nkandla protesting against the Constitutional Court’s order for the imprisonment of Jacob Zuma, we knew things were about to get difficult. Yet we were unprepared for the dystopian scenes of burning and looting in KwaZulu-Natal and parts of Johannesburg.
Given what we were going through with the latest and most vicious Covid-19 infection wave, last week felt like the final assault on our psyche. It felt unbearable. Yet the rand depreciated only 3.6% against the dollar and retraced those losses into the end of the week. The rand can be volatile at the best of times, yet it ignored the chaos. Why?..
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