Oops, Trump did it again! written by Jeremy Gardiner - local politics isn’t necessarily to blame when we have a sell-off.
"2018 started so well. We had been spared an additional eight years of another Zuma presidency and we had a great new leader in Cyril Ramaphosa. Finally, we could start fixing the country.
Then suddenly in April, ‘Ramaphoria’ went out the window, our currency dived, the petrol price rocketed, growth slowed into recession and the stock market got hammered. South Africans blamed our politics and corruption, when in fact, the same scenario was playing itself out across most emerging markets worldwide. The reason, very simply, was that Trump had declared economic war on the Chinese. Globally, analysts seemingly concluded that tariffs of 25% on all Chinese exports to America were likely to significantly dent the Chinese, and therefore all emerging market growth, and they dumped emerging market assets. In May last year, foreign investors sold more South African bonds than ever before in one month.
2019 feels eerily similar. Finally, awoken from their five-year slumber, equity markets have been spurred on by a seemingly imminent end to the tariff war. Despite Eskom and corruption, a bumper first quarter was followed by an equally exciting beginning to the second."
South Africa is at a crossroads by Nazmeera Moola-
South Africa needs to do everything it can to boost confidence, investment and growth.
"A week after South Africa’s fifth democratic election and the election results reveal that the country has made the pragmatic decision. Voters have given the ANC a sufficient majority to comfortably form a government, both nationally and in the eight provinces it previously ruled.
In the run-up to the election two questions took centre stage. First, would Cyril Ramaphosa gain a big enough endorsement to implement reform?"