Is Zuma lining up Brics to bailout our dysfunctional SOEs?
President Jacob Zuma could now be taking his struggle with Pravin Gordhan for control of the country's purse strings to a new level
President Jacob Zuma and his estranged Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan flew in separate aircraft to Hangzhou, China, for the G20 summit last week. For many, that seemed to symbolise nicely the parlous current state of South Africa’s political economy. But what happened on the margins of the G20 was more intriguing, at least for South Africa, than the summit itself. Zuma met Chinese President Xi Jinping, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and brand-new Brazilian President Michel Temer for a Brics meeting. There, South African banker Leslie Maasdorp, vice-president of the so-called "Brics bank" (properly called the New Development Bank) disclosed that South African state-owned enterprises (SOEs) might approach the bank for funding. This was reported by the state broadcaster, the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC), as an answer to its question whether the Brics bank could compensate the SOEs for the withholding of new capital investment ...
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