PETER BRUCE: Can Cyril Ramaphosa lead us out of this mess?
'Ramaphosa may be floating like a cork in a stormy sea but the important thing is he's still floating'
EXTRACT
We have debts, huge and getting bigger by the day, to pay. One slip in the debt markets, one late payment, and we're gone. We get bailed out and do what we're told. It's that close.
Nonetheless, a near miss would still be a miss.
If - when - Ramaphosa wins his own mandate next year, he'll have room to do a few simple things that might inoculate us from further harm. Taking back control of the NPA would be one. By then the revenue service will have begun to recover its poise. And, given time to think and talk, there is a rational way to redistribute land.
I still have hope. We're still standing and we're still talking
I suspect very few people know how much trouble South Africa is in. It's not that we're approaching a racial civil war. I think South Africans are far too sensible for that. They don't want their country destroyed. They want a stake in something with a future. But there must be a small group of people, concentrated probably in the National Treasury, who look at our debt and wonder how on earth they are going to get it under control, or at least hide the truth long enough for someone to answer the question.South Africa's public finances are in a dreadful state. Does anyone really think Eskom, which started its pay talks this year by offering employees a 0% increase, can possibly survive in its current form now that it is offering well over 7% to unions who keep pushing because they can sniff management's fear? The same goes for most state-owned companies. And the Reserve Bank has just cut its growth forecast for the year from 1.7% to 1.2% - or by nearly 30%. At Eskom, and in the Unio...
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