It’s post Rubicon speech time again

Remember 16 August 1985?

It feels like the 16 th August 1985. PW Botha, the President of apartheid South Africa had made an infamous speech in Durban the night before to tell the world to go to hell. They were expecting him to announce the end of apartheid and freeing of Mandela. The Rand halved in value overnight, sanctions were tightened , growth expectations tanked, stock market collapsed and government finances were a mess with huge deficits and no way to finance them while at the same time trying fight a war externally and massive unrest internally. Factory output was in free fall, our export markets had vanished and we could not afford imports. Unemployment soared and property markets crashed. Nobody was coming to save us. Sounds familiar? Yet the country buckled down and ground its way out slowly until one of two things could happen – a new political and financial dispensation or an outright collapse in the country. Five years later Nelson Mandela was belatedly freed and this heralded almost 20 years of growth bar a break for the credit crunch. It’s 2020 and We are back at the brink again. Luckily with a president who understands that we are out of options. I hope wise heads prevail and we act faster and more decisively than we did 35 years ago.

Share this post