On Sunday, discipline and rationality won boxing’s big day when a 4.5kg lighter Anthony Joshua reversed his shock defeat by butterball Andy Ruiz, who’d packed on an extra 6kg of flab. In Southern Africa, we’re witnessing a parallel in a matchup between South Africa and near neighbour Angola: one determined to keep packing on the flab; the other working hard to shed public sector-inspired excess.
Yesterday, SA president Cyril Ramaphosa’s latest weekly newsletter got the roasting it deserved on social media. Despite all evidence, Ramaphosa is betting on a different outcome from the same approach, so “the state will retain ownership of all those state-owned enterprises that are strategic.” Including overblown power stations Medupi and Kusile.
In Angola, president Joao Lourenco, who like Ramapohosa is about two years into the job, has hired the World Bank to assist in a massive privatisation programme. His presidential decree on August 5 detailed disposals of over 200 State-owned companies ranging from banks and mines through to telecoms and construction businesses.
After years of socialist-inspired dogma which bred endemic corruption and little re-investment into an all-important oil sector (95% of exports; 70% of taxes), Angola is on its knees. So Lourenco is handing over the economic keys to the private sector. South Africa, whose economy has also been growing slower than its population, has decided differently.
