Extract The figures might have been released by Stats SA but they felt like a goodbye present straight from Jacob Zuma; a 3.2% plunge in GDP, tied up in a ribbon, sealed with a kiss, and couriered to our doorstep by Number One, officially ending the skidmark that was his presidency with one final, emphatic debacle.
It even had a poetic symmetry to it. This quarterly result was much, much worse than expected, and “much, much worse than expected” is how history will remember Zuma’s time in office.
To be fair, however, Zuma didn’t produce this turd all by himself.
The Guptas, for example, should also get a chance to sign the card: “So long and thanks for all the GDP. Wish we could have stayed longer but you can only fit so many dollars into a private jet. Yours in Stage 5 load-shedding, XXX.”
SA’s labour unions, too, should take a bow, like those revolutionaries at Sars who went on strike demanding the reinstatement of Tom Moyane. I hope all of them are rewarded in heaven, because God knows they’ve helped make sure they won’t be rewarded by the economy.
Who could have imagined that politicians and their legions of paper-shufflers would have found a way to get on the lifeboat ahead of everybody else?
The figures make for desperate reading. Agriculture fared the worst, slumping by 13.2% (at this point being a farmer is a calling, not a career, and anyone who decides to stick it out is a national hero), while mining shrank by 10.8%, paradoxically digging the country deeper into a hole by not digging deeper holes, or at least not digging them efficiently enough.
One industry, however, weathered the storm better than all the rest, although you’ll never guess which. No, really, this is going to blow your mind. Are you ready? The economic sector that grew the most, at 1.2%, was the government.
I know. It shocked me too. Who could have imagined that politicians and their legions of paper-shufflers would have found a way to get on the lifeboat ahead of everybody else?
(Speaking of political winners: the miserable economic news was pure gold for the EFF, which gets stronger every time SA gets poorer. Its leaders might claim to be anticapitalist, but they’ve hedged their bets better than the sharpest shark on Wall Street.)
Defenders of Cyril Ramaphosa insist that he is doing what he can, which, so far, is giving the National Prosecuting Authority some (theoretical) teeth, appointing a curate’s egg of a cabinet, and not deliberately setting the country on fire.
Of the new dawn, however, there seems desperately little sign. Then again, they say it’s always darkest just before the dawn. And right now, it feels pretty damned dark.
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