Sell your islands, you bankrupt Greeks! And sell the Acropolis too! That was a headline in leading German tabloid Bild a few years ago, at the height of Greece's economic crisis. It was a message from a rather irritated big brother in Germany who had to back the entire European experiment, including its noisy and irresponsible neighbour in the south. South Africa isn't quite in the same position yet, but we are at the stage where the country has to look at its finest silver. With a growing debt bill that may soon threaten the state's ability to pay civil servants and a welfare bill that has about 17 million dependants, it's no wonder the Treasury is now seriously asking what we need and what we don't need - pragmatism before ideology.
When the crisis in Greece was at its peak - sometime in 2011 - South Africa and other emerging- market nations such as Brazil and Turkey were in a sweet spot, enjoying a free ride with global investors. It was not their own doing, but on the back of ravenous demand from China for spoils under the earth.
What this growth served to do was to cover up our own structural problems, such as corruption. It was more or less during this time that we saw a near-collapse of a Limpopo provincial government, politically led by a powerful ANC Youth League president called Julius Malema.
To say it was a near-collapse is to be kind. It remains one of the poorest provinces, and has never fully recovered.
But the fallout happened when investor fears centred on the fate of Europe. These tales of collapsing administrations in far-flung South African provinces and troubling calls for nationalisation by some of its political heavyweights were mostly seen as hot air.
The rand, always a bellwether for not only South African sentiment but that of emerging markets, rallied from a low of R11.56 in the aftermath of the global recession to just more than R6.50 in the middle of 2011. Investors bought the consumption story, and some of our retail stocks, such as Mr Price, were the biggest beneficiaries.
Noise around Europe and its future was always going to taper off, especially after its central bank assured everyone that they'd save the euro along with its "obedient" southern neighbours.
And with that change in sentiment, the rand is about 96% weaker than it was in 2011. South Africa's underlying weaknesses are exposed.
Corruption is being revealed on an almost daily basis, along with failures of governance on all levels, too. These haven't just manifested overnight in the rise of the first family - it runs much deeper. With membership of the ruling party in the continent's most sophisticated economy coming at a cost of just R20 a year, the ANC was and continues to be for sale.
These are problems that stretch back to as far as the hallowed one's first term in office in 1994. But to be fair to Nelson Mandela, political careerism was a cancer in his beloved party even in its exile years.
As a country we were blinded to this because of the euphoria that followed the dawn of the 1990s, an era that ushered in the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Berlin Wall. It was a period that promised a fairer world for Africa.
Now that our dirty secrets are being aired, South Africa's risk profile is being repriced. As a country faced with inequality, unemployment and a skills crisis, it's a price that we shouldn't be comfortable with. To stem the loss of confidence in our story, a pragmatic approach is our only avenue. Ideological battles shouldn't be used to protect the interests of those who are most likely to lose from any clean-out that has to begin across all spheres of society. We've long been corrupt, and that's our truth. To not deal with this sad reality is to see South Africa's risk profile deteriorate even further - and snugly fall into the hands of an unwanted big brother, whether in the East or the West.
What islands will they tell us to sell?
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