In today’s opinions, we’re covering a looming interest rate hike expected from the SA Reserve Bank this week, the recent ANC elective conference in the Eastern Cape, which was won by Eastern Cape premier and Cyril Ramaphosa ally Oscar Mabuyane, and US activist Bill Browder’s ominous warning about Russian President Vladimir Putin for South Africa.
Business Day’s Lukanyo Mnyanda writes about the heightened role central banks have started to play in everyday people’s lives with rising interest rates and soaring costs on the forefront of minds.
Mnyanda writes briefly about the near-term history of quantitative easing and touches on the tough decision SA Reserve Bank Governor Lesetja Kganyago and the rest of the monetary policy committee will have to make when they begin their latest meeting on Tuesday ahead of an expected further rate hike on Thursday.
Songezo Zibi writes about Mabuyane’s re-election as ANC chairperson in the Eastern Cape and details how the governing party has let the province down and presided over a skills drainage as more and more people leave the province to search for opportunities elsewhere in the country.
Zibi details the corruption and maladministration that has led to a near-collapse of the province.
“The fabric of the province has been corrupted for far longer than the ANC has been in power. The homeland governments were profoundly corrupt. The cadres merely found a machine that was already steaming ahead, expanded it and gave it more energy. It is now a juggernaut that cannot be stopped by those who are its stewards,” writes Zibi.
Adriaan Basson recounts listening to Bill Browder talk at the recent Franschhoek literary festival about how he became an enemy of the Russian state after having spent over $4 billion in investment in the country following the fall of communism.
Browder had his businesses in Russia raided and new directors and owners instilled by Putin. Browder turned to top Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who found a web of corruption and was arrested and tortured to death by the Russian state for his efforts.
Browder likens Magnitsky’s death to that of Steve Biko’s killing by the apartheid regime’s police squad and says he does not doubt in his mind that the recent revelation that a large portion of ANC funding comes from a mine connected to a Russian oligarch as the reason for South Africa’s flimsy stance on Russian aggression in Ukraine.
While Browder owns a home in Cape Town, he is so fearful of Putin that he refuses to even travel to SA out of fear he might be arrested by the Russian president’s allies.
Here’s a round-up of opinions, editorials, and in-depth articles we’re reading:
Steenhuisen was right to visit Ukraine – and SA’s position on the war is constitutionally dodgy – Daily Maverick
PALI LEHOHLA | The just transition gift horse that might be the Trojan Horse – Sunday Times Daily (for subscribers)
WILLIE THABE: Gender could be at play in Scopa chair’s infantilisation of Eskom’s Mavuso – Business Day
MICHAEL MORRIS: Checked speech is the fundamental tool of unchecked power – Business Day (for subscribers)
BUSISIWE MAVUSO: Mining Indaba shows Mantashe has to get cracking – Business Day (for subscribers)
Mark Gevisser | How I became a victim of the Mbeki-Zuma spy-vs-spy wars – News24 (for subscribers)
Potholes, dysfunction and dystopia: Dark irony never changed the world – The Citizen (for subscribers)
