The decision by President Jacob Zuma this week to deploy a battalion of soldiers to Cape Town as additional security ahead of the annual state of the nation address says more than any speech.
It's all very 1985.
The last thing South Africa needs is another Rubicon moment like PW Botha's refusal in 1985 to bow to the will of the country, choosing instead to clamp down on its citizens with unprecedented force. We defaulted on our debt, inflation rocketed and violence surged.
It was hard to not conjure up gambling analogies this week as the president and core members of his cabinet held one of their regular meetings with business leaders at the GrandWest Casino complex outside Cape Town.
Zuma is keen to position himself at the centre of economic life. The economy has not, to put it kindly, proved to be his strong point, hence his grin-and-bear-it interactions with the private sector.
He is betting big business will deliver the growth he needs to salvage a modicum of credibility as his term as ANC president draws to a close. Business is hoping that its co-operation with government and labour will keep a downgrade at bay long enough for politics to sort itself out and provide a stable operating environment.
South Africa is in crisis mode. We're putting out fires at every turn and being pretty effective at doing so. But it comes at a cost to the future.
Our collective energy is being spent on avoiding a downgrade in June and little attention is being focused on long-term strategy, the National Development Plan so meticulously crafted by some of the country's smartest people. There is still time to dust it off and apply its broad principles, but it needs commitment not lip service.
South Africa is in desperate need of strategic leadership with the vision to set big, audacious goals and to guide the country to that point.
On Wednesday, activists in Cape Town presented what they called the "real" state of the nation; the president delivered his version on Thursday. The brutal reality check will be delivered by Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan in his budget speech in 10 days.
It's harder to disguise the ugly truth when the national balance sheet is held up to the flame of public scrutiny. South Africa needs to use the budget to shape a new, tough reality, rather than a platform for fanciful dreams that routinely create false expectations.
Unlike Apple - the most valuable company in the world - which revealed this week it has enough cash to run South Africa for at least two years, we are struggling to pay our bills. Apple has cash reserves of $246-billion - close to R3.3-trillion. We have a rising debt burden, and, despite the National Treasury's best efforts, much of what is collected by the South African Revenue Service is squandered or stolen.
As a taxpayer, you have no idea whether you are getting value for money. The finance minister in the 2017 budget needs to give us some ratios by which we can measure whether we are achieving a decent return on our annual investment in social welfare, infrastructure, education and health.
The Treasury is looking for tips for Gordhan. Here are mine:
If we could devise a return on investment number it would help us to measure what South Africans get in return for the nearly R1.4-trillion the government spends annually. If you can accurately measure it, you can track it. Most South Africans have been pretty good about paying their taxes, but there seems to be a growing reluctance to comply.
Most of what is collected is in the form of personal and corporate taxes as well as a mix of other revenues such as fuel levies, VAT, transfer duties and a plethora of other creative extractive techniques the state applies to your pay slip.
The minister will find it easier to sell his budget if he can tell South Africans exactly how their contribution makes life better for all, rather than just a few.
Whitfield is a public speaker on the political economy and an award-winning financial journalist and broadcaster
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