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With South Africa on the precipice of a recession, unemployment rising and the rand continuing to weaken to record levels against the US dollar, it’s easy to forget that the year also brought some lighter moments, and even good news. Here the finweek team shares some of the highlights – and disappointments – of 2015.
Biggest irritation:
President Jacob Zuma’s speech writer who – despite all the social media jokes and memes making fun of the president’s inability to read numbers – still fails to write the numbers out in words.
Maybe we’ll have better luck in twenty thousand and six… wait… hehe…
Oh, and companies who don’t respect us enough to keep us properly and timeously informed of their balls-ups.
MTN and its massive Nigeria fine; Steinhoff and its German tax raid; Murray & Roberts and the M1 bridge collapse are but three examples of execs taking their time to inform us of what turned out to be market-moving news.
Worst blow for SA’s economy:
There have been many headwinds this year – electricity shortages hampering investment and output; a prolonged drought, with some provinces experiencing drought conditions for the third consecutive year of below-average rainfall; a slowing Chinese economy, which hurt commodity prices and exports in particular.
But nothing comes close to the damage President Jacob Zuma and most of his administration are causing the economy through policy uncertainty, cadre deployment and supporting state-owned enterprises at seemingly any cost.
Our favourite troublemaker:
The year will be remembered for various student protests, starting off with the #RhodesMustFall movement which culminated in #FeesMustFall in Pretoria shortly before the year-end exams.
While a noble effort (we can’t wait to see which issues students will put on the national agenda next year), they still didn’t come close to Julius Malema and his Economic Freedom Fighters. Never has South Africa paid so much attention to what’s happening in Parliament.
CEO to watch:
If it owns a mine or a well, it’s probably in trouble, The New York Times writes in a recent article detailing the pains of being in the commodity business at the moment.
We will be keeping a close eye on two mining CEOs, for two very different reasons: Sibanye Gold boss Neal Froneman, who is building a (so far) home-grown new diversified miner; and Mark Cutifani, who is cutting what used to be the grand old dame of SA’s economy – Anglo American – to… nothing?
This is an excerpt from an article that originally appeared in the 17 December 2015 edition of finweek. Buy and download the magazine here.
