Going into the festive season a year ago, SA had been shaken by Nenegate and only just reassured by the reappointment of Pravin Gordhan as finance minister. Going into the new year, Gordhan brought the CEOs of SA’s largest companies together in what has become a new kind of partnership between business and the government, with a new sense of purpose. That partnership, forged initially around the World Economic Forum in Davos to restore investor confidence in SA’s battered markets and to avert a ratings downgrade, has extended to include labour and community leaders and has become a more durable initiative. It has helped to steward the economy through a very difficult year, globally and locally, and to keep the country’s sovereign rating at investment grade, despite it all. Going into 2016, the rand was a victim of SA’s dysfunctional politics. But it has since been through such dramatic ups and downs that the volatility in the exchange rate in 2016 has been back at 2009 global financ...

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