How world sees SA in 2020 – Heading for junk

2019 was the year when it became clear that the financial crisis at Eskom was a national debt problem. The New Dawn in South Africa that the election of President Cyril Ramaphosa promised when he came to power turned into a long night with the total breakdown of many of the country's state owned enterprises. The year was peppered with power blackouts, the business rescue of SAA and similar problems at Prasa and the SABC. Finance Minister Tito Mboweni had to dig deep into the national treasury to try to keep the lights on with R59bn in bailouts for Eskom. Moody's was the only ratings agency that did not downgrade South Africa to junk status. For Ramaphosa and Mboweni to turn this situation around and get the nod from the ratings agencies; drastic steps are needed, steps that would take a confrontation with the unions. He and Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan managed to stare down the unions in the case of SAA, but getting past the unions to implement their turnaround plan for Eskom is going to be tougher. Cosatu has threatened with protests on the very first day that Eskom's new CEO Andre de Ruyter steps into his office. If Ramaphosa and Mboweni don't; the FT's prediction on South Africa may well be right and South Africa could be reduced to junk status early in the new year. – Linda van Tilburg

By Thulasizwe Sithole

When it came to predictions for 2019, the FT acknowledges that it got it wrong as the world appeared to be even more unpredictable than before. In the case of Brexit, forecasting that Brexit would be reversed as Philip Stephens did ,was based "as much in hope as expectation." Populists did not make the gains in the European parliament elections that was expected and the S&P 500 beat the expectations of most analysts. But the FT's predictions and that of their readers were better than it was 2018. So with that caveat; the paper is making another go at it and its predictions for South Africa is not great.

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