Finance minister Enoch Godongwana’s revised budget has landed with all the grace of ANC first deputy secretary-general Nomvula Mokonyane trying to pick up the rand, a feeble and ineffectual attempt to course-correct an economy the ANC has spent the past two decades merrily gutting. The lying since, about the DA’s alleged demands and horse-trading, underlines how duplicitous the ANC is.     

And yet the real debate is not about VAT. It’s about the great question economists, investors and the public are asking in increasingly urgent tones: why has SA stagnated? Why has an economy, blessed with abundant natural resources and a young, growing population, been shackled to the corpse of government failure, cronyism and ineptitude? ..

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