WORLDVIEW: Why junk status could be best thing to happen to South Africa

Yesterday morning I participated in a debate representing the "optimistic" picture for SA – on the other side was Nomura's Peter Attard Montalto who represented the "pessimistic" view. He had home ground advantage – the event being held at Nomura's head office in the city of London. It was arranged by the SA Chamber of Commerce UK..To keep the conversation free and flowing, we were not able to record the event. The discussion was vibrant, with each of us given the time to outline our position. Then came questions from the chairman John Battersby and members of the audience. I thought you might like to see where my optimism stems from – so here are my introductory comments:.As a youngster, I was deeply involved with Boy Scouts, the pinnacle of which was being selected to represent South Africa at the international World Jamboree in Norway. I mention this part of my formative years to highlight two issues critical in the context of today's debate..___STEADY_PAYWALL___.The first involves race relations, a topic given much airtime in SA today. At Lillehammer in 1975, I spent 10 days sharing a small tent with Jacob Mokoena and Joseph Mphuthi. Our troop's scoutmaster was VK Naidoo. We got on just fine, as humans of all different hues and cultures do when you dispense with the social engineering applied by those with vested interests. That was true in the darkest days of apartheid and remains so today, as all legitimate research shows us. Racially divisive rhetoric lacks substance and will fail..The second point relates to how scouting promotes observation skills, an asset developed during formative years and honed through my career in journalism. It is the small things that speak loudest – the little messages which, when collated, point us to the most likely future. And to the interested observer, the weight of evidence in SA today is overwhelming..So what exactly does today's aware South African observer observe?.We have a ruling political party at war with itself, the conflict having recently burst into the open. One grouping, led by the ruling party's compromised president, threatens to take SA down a path that mirrors Zimbabwe-like industrial scale plundering. This group depends on a network of patronage and requires the Zuma dynasty to be perpetuated. Its power is waning. Hence my belief in the high road scenario..Whatever critics might think of his economics, very few would question the ethics and morality of South Africa's former Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan. I well remember our private lunch back in Pretoria while he was the head of SA Revenue Services he told me: "I am an activist. That is what defines me." Gordhan the activist, a believer in civil society's ability to change things, always knew his time was limited. He understands the public needs simple slogans to rally behind. So he who introduced "junk status" into popular conversation..Now we read tweets which tell us "South Africa might have a junk president, but it is not a junk country." And at marches we see posters carrying the same message. Gordhan has taken national finances mainstream. It has become something every South African relates to and whose relevance is understood. They easily make the connection between the firing of Gordhan and junk status – and are joining the dots as the former finance minister urged them to. While Joe Public may not appreciate the complexities of what junk status means, they understand what the word means and don't like it..That has lifted the scales from eyes of SA's majority who always saw but refused to act against growing evidence of systematic plundering by a politically connected elite. The 2017 Edelmans Trust Barometer shows us only 15% of South Africans trust the Zuma Administration – easily the lowest score for 28 countries surveyed. But now civil society is "gatvol". They have come to realise the proposed nuclear deal is little more than a vehicle through which a gigantic heist of national resources will be effected. So they celebrated yesterday's epic High Court judgement which puts the nuclear programme back to where it started when Zuma agreed a secret deal with Putin in August 2014..Civil society is not only mobilising in the courts. Hundreds of thousands marched in almost every sizeable community in the country, the middle class participating in bulk for the first time. Even more unprecedented was how over a million Christians gathered for a giant prayer meeting in Bloemfontein last weekend. That this meeting could be organised in just six weeks tells us much about the way ordinary citizens view this national crisis..Other messages on the winds whisper the same story. In the past few weeks we have witnessed a crooked police chief being fired by the courts; we have witnessed Zuma's opponents in the ANC very publicly breaking with him; we've seen the appointment of five new directors at the SABC, four of whom are very clearly anti Zuma; we are seeing Treasury stabbing at the heart of the crony capitalist Gupta family's crooked deal with Eskom. The list keeps growing..The tide has turned. The young constitutional democracy has held despite intense stress testing. Civil society smells change and the momentum to achieve it is building. South Africa is likely to go through a turbulent period. But it is on the road to recovery and set to break Africa's depressing cycle of liberation followed by economic collapse. The country which will emerge will have gone through the fire, but emerge much stronger for the experience.

WORLDVIEW: Why junk status could be best thing to happen to South Africa

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