“The economy is moving in the right direction after the disasters of, among others, state capture and Covid-19,” said Dr Roelof Botha, a leading political economist from Gauteng and previous winner of the Finmedia Economist of the Year award, at an informative talk in Welgemoed last Tuesday.
The insightful discussion was presented by Pam Golding Welgemoed on various subjects from selling you home, planning your financial future to the economy’s impact on retirement.
Government of national unity
“The government of national unity, which now consists mainly of the ANC and the DA and a couple of quite small parties, are still finding each other. Quite frankly, the ANC are still getting used to the fact that they are not in charge anymore,” Botha said.
“Recently on a live TV programme, I commented that how can the government of national unity be bad for Africa if the political party that has provided South Africa with a case study of how to manage a province, is now part of the national government? This can only be good.
“The Western Cape has provided South Africa and the world with a case study of how to run municipalities. Not one of the dysfunctional municipalities in South Africa – and there are dozens of them – are in the Western Cape,” he said.
‘Unmitigated disaster’
“State capture costs this economy three trillion rand – three trillion rand of lost gross domestic product (GDP). To put that in perspective, our economy last year produced R7,3 trillion rand’s worth of goods.
“This was an unmitigated disaster, but you can recover from state capture within a decade if you have the right policies,” he said.
“The first disaster was when Gill Marcus (a South African banker and politician who served as governor of the South African Reserve Bank from 2009 to 2014) retired. Zuma appointed a new Monetary Policy Committee (MPC), and they immediately took the real prime rate from 3 to 5%, and by the way, it’s now 8%. Then came state capture, and then came covid,” he said.
‘Right direction’
“But we’re moving in the right direction. In 2023, the South African government had the wisdom of asking the World Bank to come forward with a roadmap for higher growth in South Africa. We had recovered quite well, but not as well as we could have,” according to Botha.
“Your average deposit required for home purchase has gone up, unfortunately, rather predictably, with high interest rates. People tend to fall into default. And fortunately, the banks are still giving us loans for home buying, but the deposits have become steeper for buyers.
“The African Construction Index has picked up of late. The last two quarters have seen growth, but the long-term, the four-year average is still below pre-covid. There is a dire need for more housing in South Africa at all levels, and for more diversification within your own residential property market,” he said.
“If you go back into the last 70 years more or less, if the mining sector is spending money on new capital formation despite the fact that platinum is nowhere, iron ore is nowhere, the coal price is nowhere and only gold is shining, then it’s usually a sign that things are going to start improving.
“And if you look at capital formation in the key sectors, electricity, water and gas, manufacturing, transport, communication and storage, and in mining, all of them are moving in the right direction,” he said.
“This year is not going to be a 3% or 4% growth year; it’s going to be a tough year, but I’m bidding my hopes on 2026 when I hope we can get to 4% growth,” he said.
Francois Botha from Optimum Financial Services discussed smart investment strategies and gave a positive outlook on investment growth, while Koos van der Merwe and his daughter, Elizabeth Taylor, from Pam Golding Properties in Welgemoed, talked about the home-selling process.
Other speakers included Tyron Vomberg from Inspecto on compliance certificates and Kobus de Kock of Currencies Direct about moving money abroad.
