The currency has plunged to a level last seen when Jacob Zuma was still in charge, having retreated from a three-year high against the dollar amid a toxic cocktail of negative economic news, political risks and falling commodity prices. An investor retreat from emerging markets has accelerated its slide of almost 10 percent against the dollar this month.
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It’s curtains for Ramaphoria. Case in point: Emfuleni fire engines ‘repossessed’
So-called Ramaphoria has been waning for a few months now, but this week has really been a thud back to reality for those Saffers still living within the Republic's borders.
JOHANNESBURG — So-called Ramaphoria has been waning for a few months now, but this week has really been a thud back to reality for those Saffers still living within the Republic's borders. Yesterday, a warning from Moody's as well as Gwede Mantashe's bizarre comments on land EWC contributed towards sending the rand into a mini-tailspin against the US dollar. But while the macroeconomic picture for SA is not looking rosy at the moment, you only need to look at how dire things are for smaller municipalities and towns to see how collapse is happening all around us. The ANC-run Emfuleni municipality in Gauteng, which has key urban areas such as Vereeniging and Vanderbijlpark under its belt, is so broke that it can't even pay for the vehicles it's been leasing from Bidvest, according to civil society body OUTA. Among the vehicles said to be repossessed are fire trucks. – Gareth van Zyl
By Robert Brand and Colleen Goko
(Bloomberg) – If there were any doubts that the euphoria following Cyril Ramaphosa's election as president of South Africa has evaporated, this week's slump in the rand has removed them.
Ramapanther. More cartoon magic available at www.zapiro.com.
When Ramaphosa took over as president in February, he promised to stimulate growth and attract investment, fix the finances of state-owned enterprises, and root out the corruption that marked Zuma's administration. Investors took note: the rand surged to a three-year high in February and borrowing costs fell as inflows into the country's bonds and stocks surged. The mood was dubbed "Ramaphoria." There's no sign of it now.
"The change in the political leadership after Cyril Ramaphosa took power provided a boost to investor sentiment, sparking a rally in the rand that has now been reversed," Mark Bohlund, an Africa economist at Bloomberg Economics, wrote in a report. "Foreign investors could become concerned about renewed lapses in fiscal consolidation or the government's ability to rein in financial risks from state-owned enterprises."
Things started changing in April as rising US interest rates and a strengthening dollar began to sap demand for emerging-market assets. While crises in Argentina, Turkey and Russia provided the context, homegrown problems fuelled the retreat.
The economy contracted in the first quarter as the current-account deficit widened, highlighting the country's vulnerability to capital outflows. Mining production, once the engine of the economy, has slumped, and manufacturing and consumer spending have struggled to pick up the slack. A widening budget gap has limited Ramaphosa's ability to boost infrastructure and social spending.
"South Africa faces domestic challenges at a time when the external backdrop is less positive for risky assets," said Piotr Matys, a London-based emerging-market strategist at Rabobank. "The US dollar is broadly stronger on the back of widening interest-rate differentials, the US and China are involved in a trade war and Turkey is a major warning signal for other economies which rely on volatile capital inflows to finance current-account deficits."
The rand dropped 2 percent on Wednesday to 14.5292 per dollar, before recovering ground to trade at 14.3772 as of 8:25 a.m. Thursday. It hit 15.5517 on Monday, the weakest since June 2016. The cost of insuring the country's debt against default for five years using credit-default swaps climbed 14 basis points to 219, the highest in more than a month. Moody's Investors Service rates South Africa's foreign and local debt at Baa3, the lowest investment level.
Adding to the weakness, Naspers Ltd., which accounts for 18 percent of the benchmark stock index, tumbled after China's Tencent Holdings Ltd., in which it owns a 31 percent stake, missed earnings estimates.
Populist faction
The tipping point came on Aug. 1, when Ramaphosa, bending to the populist faction of his party, announced that he would seek a constitutional amendment to allow expropriation of land without compensation. The move could undermine property rights and deter investment, some analysts say. Investors are looking north to neighbouring Zimbabwe, where a program of violent land seizures beginning in the late 1990s wrecked the economy.
Gwede Mantashe, chairman of the governing African National Congress, stoked the concerns on Wednesday when he proposed that white farmers should be forced to turn over excess land to the government, handing traders another excuse to abandon the rand on a day that both Moody's and Reserve Bank Governor Lesetja Kganyago sounded warnings on the economy.
"Markets are sensitive to anything perceived to be 'Zimbabwe-fication' on the land-reform front," said Henrik Gullberg, executive director of emerging-market strategy at Nomura International Plc. The fact that Mantashe was just repeating proposals that had been made before "doesn't really matter, especially in an environment of broader US dollar strength," he said.
The next big test for the rand may be the mid-term budget review scheduled for October, where Finance Minister Nhlanhla Nene will have to convince investors that the government can maintain spending discipline in the run-up to 2019 elections.
If management of the national economy is anywhere like what's happening locally, they'd have reason to be worried.
The Emfuleni municipality, which is part of South Africa's richest province, had all of its vehicles repossessed by Bidvest Group Ltd., civil society group the Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse said Wednesday. Emfuleni lost the vehicles for its traffic, water, electricity and fire departments.
Emfuleni loses all vehicles
From OUTA*
Emfuleni apparently defaulted on payments. Municipalities ought to know that service providers must be paid.
OUTA understands that this includes vehicles from the traffic, water and electricity departments and fire engines and that they were repossessed by Bidvest, from whom they were leased.
OUTA believes that Emfuleni should now be dissolved.
The National Treasury regulations stipulate that service providers must be paid within 30 days of issuing an invoice. Emfuleni Municipality has also not honoured its financial obligations to Eskom, Rand Water and many other service providers.
"The White Paper on Local Government and the Local Government Systems Act stress the critical importance of community and civil society involvement in the governance of municipalities, yet all interventions in collapsed municipalities exclude civil society and community representatives," says Dr Makhosi Khoza, OUTA Executive Director responsible for the local governance programme.
OUTA calls on Minister of Cooperative Governance Zweli Mkhize, Premier David Makhura and the Gauteng and national treasuries to urgently implement Section 139, the constitutional provision that allows for the dissolution of Emfuleni municipality.
"The councillors in Emfuleni municipality have failed to fulfil their electoral mandate. Allow communities and civil society to play a part in rescuing the collapsed Emfuleni municipality," says Khoza.
"When all is said and done, it is the communities that suffer when municipal services are not delivered or fail."
OUTA once again calls on Minister Mkhize to afford OUTA an opportunity to meet with him to find sustainable municipal solutions. He has repeatedly ignored the community and civil society in the resolution of municipal problems.
OUTA is a proudly South African civil action organisation, that is purely crowd funded. Our work is supported by ordinary citizens who are passionate about holding government accountable and ensuring our taxes are used to the benefit of all South Africans.
- OUTA is the 'Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse'.