Since the beginning of a crucial year — in which the ANC is likely to suffer a fourth electoral humiliation under the leadership of President Cyril Ramaphosa — the party’s leaders have started to insult the electorate and make idiotic statements.
Ramaphosa told an impoverished household: “I went to 100 companies door to door until I got a bursary. I decided that I am going to get on my feet. That is how you get success. Success will never come and visit you and say, ‘Knock-knock, I am success.’” But many companies did come knocking on Ramaphosa’s door when he started Shanduka, his BEE company.
ANC chair Gwede Mantashe said 12.4-million unemployed people are too lazy to look for jobs. That was a deeply hurtful statement in an economy that created only 21,000 jobs during 2025. Why is it so difficult for Mantashe to understand that there are no jobs because of his party’s failed neoliberal macroeconomic policies?
Gauteng premier Panyaza Lesufi said he also suffered as a result of the Joburg water crisis and has to go to a hotel to shower. Gauteng health MEC Nomantu Nkomo-Ralehoko said some people actually prefer to sleep on floors, rather than beds, at public hospitals.
At an Old Mutual event, finance minister Enoch Godongwana shamed 12.4-million unemployed people by saying the people who march in protest every time he presents his budget “have no work to do”. He said those people who deal with the budget on a day-to-day basis and “those who understand the economy” believe the government is doing a good job. “Those who call me neoliberal are far from the day-to-day activities of the economy,” he said.
But the truth is that the Treasury cares only about pleasing financial markets. These are the top 1% who think the Treasury is doing a good job — those who have never been to a squatter camp or seen the pain in the eyes of unemployed people in their families.
I cannot think of any sector except finance — the Big Five banks and Big Two insurance companies — that benefits from this horror show of an economy, which is heading for two decades of declining average living standards and does not serve the interests of the majority of the population.
Between 1994 and 2024, the finance sector grew by 3.9% a year, far faster than the rest of the economy. If he understands the economy so well, Godongwana must explain why the country had such a dismal annual average GDP growth rate of just 1.1% from 2009 to 2024.
I cannot think of any sector except finance — the Big Five banks and Big Two insurance companies — that benefits from this horror show of an economy, which is heading for two decades of declining average living standards and does not serve the interests of the majority of the population.
Why is it so impossible to achieve the annual average GDP growth rate of 4.4% recorded by 155 other emerging and developing countries over the same period? Why has the number of unemployed people increased by 6.5-million over the past 17 years? Why does the Treasury get its GDP growth forecasts wrong every year? Why has the Treasury failed to achieve its debt targets every year since austerity started in 2012?
Every year since 2012 the Treasury has said the debt ratio would stabilise within two or three years. Every year it misses its target. If austerity works, why has the debt ratio doubled to 78.9% of GDP in 2025/26 from 39.8% in 2011/12?
Last week, a bank fired a CEO, and one of the reasons was reportedly a bad quarter. If South Africa Inc were a company, it would have fired the leadership at the Treasury repeatedly after more than 50 bad quarters of missing every target it has set since 2012.
The people the ANC insults every second week have an opportunity to punish the party at the local government elections.
• Gqubule is an adviser on economic development and transformation.
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