The stark contrast in South Africa’s fortunes at Davos 2017, compared to 2016, are clear in Alec’s summation below. It’s like apples and pears in the way government is handling their audience at the World Economic Forum. And just maybe, 2017 could be the year South Africa turns a corner for the betterment of all its people. But for those following the UCT crisis, what happened in Davos may be a bit of a downer, vice-chancellor Max Price may have played his free speech red card, which says a lot. – Stuart Lowman
Hi there. Davos Diary Day 2 – the first real day of things happening in Davos. Every year I come here and get surprised by how serious the people are. The events are extremely (let’s not say tedious). There’s a bit of fun-like moments and you wonder. These are intelligent people. These are guys who actually should know what’s going on in the world, but let me tell you a little story.
We had a South African briefing just now and by the way, if this team that was briefing us today were running South Africa, the money would be flooding in from all over the world. As an emerging market, South Africa is in a class of its own when you compare what you’re up against – Mexico, Turkey, and Russia for example. Cyril Ramaphosa was incredibly presidential. He was fun. He was smiling. He reminded me of the old ANC circa 1994 where things were just so much more relaxed. Things were just so much more confident – that the team was onside.
Anyway, they did a good job. Pravin Gordhan was there along with Rob Davies, and Ebrahim Patel. All of them had a chance at the microphone, very different to when Jacob Zuma runs the place where it’s very much ‘command and control’ and he gets his acolytes to do the talking.
Here’s the story, though. We’re hardly into the briefing. They ask for questions and Max Price (who is not the journalist’s’ best friend) from UCT says, “Well, let’s talk about this ourselves, but let the media leave.” Well, you can imagine. I looked at him and said, “Are you crazy? We’ve actually come here to be transparent, to be Team South Africa, and to be talking together and my goodness. What happens? You actually want to reverse the whole thing.”
Anyway, he was overruled, thankfully. Even Cyril (I think) raised his eyebrows to think ‘what’s going on here’ and we got to hear a lot of the good things that are happening in South Africa – and they truly are. So, we are in a situation where Team South Africa is pulling in the same direction here in Davos. Of course, there are another 51 weeks in the year that we have to deal with, but even so early in this conference, one just gets the feeling that maybe we’ve been through the worst. Maybe 2016 was the worst of our years and maybe 2017 will see a lot of improvement.
This is Alec Hogg in Davos, for BrightRock who are – very generously – sponsoring these podcasts.
