MPHO

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[@DumaGqubule @DumaGqubule]

This is a nonsense statement. Why did things get much much worse after the end of state capture?

[Sizwe SikaMusi @SizweLo]

Prof Richard Werner explains what happens when a country like South Africa borrows in a foreign currency and why this is foolish.

[Nolwazi Tusini @NolwAzi_Tusini]

I dont understand why government gave up on infrastructure development and industrialisation when there are still so schools, hospitals, universities, social housing, dams and roads to be built.😭

[T @Uncle_Thaps]

The IMF guy is 38 years old. Both Lesetja and Enoch have been overseeing SA public finances since 1994, when the IMF guy was 6 years old. They are there to be told how to manage their country's finances. What a shame.

[FotMob @FotMob]

Eden Hazard was the highest rated player in the Premier League for three consecutive seasons - from 2016/17 to 2018/19! 🤯⚡️

One of the all-time greats. 👑

[Chelsea FC @ChelseaFC]

It's official. 🤝

[Simon Phillips @siphillipssport]

Deserves a huge amount of respect from Chelsea fans. Was messed around by the club, put up for sale, loaned, bought back in, always stayed professional. Been Chels since a kid. Wish him all the very best and thankful for his time here.

[Chelsea FC @ChelseaFC]

Drawing a masterpiece. ✍️

[Vusi Sambo @VusiSambo]

Psychology calls it authority bias: even if you disagree with Cyril Ramaphosa politically or criticise his leadership every day, your brain still recognises him as thee President of South Africa—the country’s highest constitutional office. His title alone carries a charming psychological weight most of us cannot resist😭

It is also known as the aura of status: social hierarchies often dictate how our brains react when we meet a powerful or famous person in real life😬

[Sizwe SikaMusi @SizweLo]

Dr Pali Lehohla says South Africa’s economy should be 3x what it is, but the government is too stupid, corrupt and greedy.

Dr Lehohla’s assessment resonate with many people because because it presents a straightforward diagnosis that if you simply root out corruption and adopt better ideas, the potential of the economy will be unlocked.

By saying that it’s just stupidity, corruption and lack of “imagination”, Dr Lehohla appears to disregard how South Africa’s economy is structured.

For starters, South Africa’s policy strategy, particularly since 1996 and especially in 2000 with the introduction of inflation-targeting, has relied heavily on attracting foreign portfolio flows to cover its chronic current account deficit.

This is what has largely kept South Africa as Africa’s leading economy. The steady flow of hundreds of billions of dollars helps South Africa cover its foreign currency shortages which it desperately needs to trade in international markets.

Now, to keep these financial inflows coming, National Treasury and the South African Reserve Bank must prioritise high real interest rates and financial market stability to reassure foreign bondholders that SA is a safe space for their dollars, pounds and euros.

Although these high interest rates attract foreign bond buyers, they also make borrowing expensive for local businesses, which stifles job creation, hence SA’s high unemployment rate.
To National Treasury and the Reserve Bank, these are just the costs of doing business.

The point is that contrary to popular belief, the Treasury isn’t acting out of ignorance or lack of vision. They are aware that if they were to deviate too sharply to pursue aggressive growth policies, they would risk a currency collapse, soaring inflation and other quite serious economic problems they would rather not deal with.

Someone may argue that adopting these policies all those years ago in the first place *is* the stupidity Dr Lehohla is lamenting. This may very well be the case, but still, there were reasons beyond just a lack of imagination.

For one, when the original GNU took office in 1994, it inherited an economy that had been isolated by sanctions, burdened by high public debt and severely capital-starved. The South African Reserve Bank had virtually no foreign exchange reserves to defend the currency or finance international trade.

The SARB had no reserves because its senior officials had pilfered and looted the money when it started looking apparent that the White minority government would collapse.

Because of this, South Africa had gone from an economy designed to comfortably serve 10% of the population, to one that had to service tens of millions more overnight. But the internal savings were far too low to finance the massive infrastructure and industrial development needed for this.

To grow the economy and meet these new social goals, South Africa needed to import capital equipment and consumer goods. However, the country needed to importing far more than it was exporting which created a persistent current account deficit and without domestic savings to bridge the gap, the government had to desperately attract foreign capital. That’s how the foreign investors came swooping in.

But there was also something that happened in the early 1990s that spooked the ANC and convinced leadership at National Treasury and the Reserve Bank that the country was hyper-vulnerable to foreign currency shortages.

In early 1996, South Africa experienced a sudden capital outflow when rumours and market uncertainty caused foreign investors to pull short-term capital out of the country. As a result, the Rand depreciated by over 20% in a few months and because official foreign exchange reserves were so low, the Reserve Bank was powerless to defend the currency.

So, to prevent currency collapses that would spark runaway inflation and destroy purchasing power, the government concluded it had to prioritise foreign investor confidence above everything else.

So, in response to the 1996 crisis, the ANC shifted away from the state-led Redistribution and Development Programme and introduced GEAR which committed the country to the public budget and removing foreign exchange controls to reassure foreign investors that they could move their money in and out freely.

In short, South Africa adopted the current way of doing things as a deliberate strategy to solve the fundamental dilemma of how to finance a growing, open economy with insufficient domestic savings and low foreign exchange reserves.

Now, to be fair to Dr Lehohla, he could be saying they were stupid and spineless for caving to foreign pressure when they could have stood their ground and doubled down on state-led industrial development. In which case, I tend to agree.

I would go a bit further and say what Treasury is doing may have been a necessity in 1996, but was already unnecessary by 2006, let alone in 2026.

South Africa now has $75 to 80 billion in gross reserves vs. almost zero in 1996. So, the original scarcity rationale is diminished. Yet Treasury has continuously been running an austerity programme, even during commodity booms like in the 2000s when it could have built fiscal buffers and invested in infrastructure.

So Dr Lehohla’s lack of imagination accusation appears to land when you ask *why* the ANC government never adapted its strategy throughout the decades as conditions changed.

The answer to this question is disheartening. The reality is that if the government, through Treasury, were to attempt to change its economic trajectory, what happened in 1996 would repeat.
Vested interests would pull capital, short the rand, spread negative news and systematically suffocate the economy until the government falls back in line.

Still, Dr Lehohla is correct that the ANC has been stupid for a while. In the last twenty years they could have built countervailing power like through a sovereign wealth fund, a regional payment system outside dollar dominance, strategic reserves of essentials or diversified trading partners to reduce USD dependency.

Instead, they accepted dependence on short-term foreign dollars, which is why they now have to keep going back to the IMF and World Bank to borrow more of those dollars.

Similarly, the National Treasury has internalised the market’s preferences so completely that they now believe austerity is good policy instead of coercion. As Antonio Gramsci warned, the dominant ideology has now become common sense.

[Penuel The Black Pen @penuelist_]

You measure a developed nation, not by how many people own cars, but by how many rich people use public transport.

You measure a developed nation not by how many jobs are created by the rich, but by how easily it is for the common man to create a job for himself.

[Nizaar Kinsella @NizaarKinsella]

🚨Como 1907 have agreed a fee to sign Chelsea defender Trevoh Chalobah for £25.7m + £5.1m, plus a sell-on clause. It ends his nearly 20 years at Stamford Bridge.

[John Duggan @JohnDugganSport]

It now seems that when you join the dots, the 2026 World Cup was a glossy brochure for private investors to parasite off the game of football in the future. The absurd ticket prices, the hydration breaks, the half time show, the bending of the rules for entertainment, not sport.

[Alexis’ Kavkas View 🇬🇪🇦🇿 @AlexisIsKavkas]

Welcome Hermano, you’re going to smash it, the ginger Vitinha

Technicians > Electricians

[Chelsea FC @ChelseaFC]

Chelsea FC is pleased to confirm the signing of Argentinian international Valentin Barco from RC Strasbourg.

Welcome to Chelsea, Valentin! 🔵

[Chelsea FC @ChelseaFC]

Our newest addition. 👊

[Bocasho Braaf @bocasho_braaf]

What do you mean one unit (KWh) was 14.98 cents in 2002 and now it's R2.40

[Nue @Nuecents37]

Pure comedy to me, he's spot on abkut the Undertaker

[Melissa Reddy @MelissaReddy_]

Africa has enormous power and sway as the second biggest voting bloc in FIFA, and as has continuously been proven, whoever is or wants to be president of the governing body has to be a ‘friend’ to the continent, enhancing development through funds, projects and opportunity.

It is not a goodwill gesture - FIFA presidents NEED Africa. It is their DUTY not a favour to grow the game.

The continent doesn’t need to sell its soul, blindly ‘stay loyal,’ silent, or bend and twist to appease whoever is in charge of FIFA.

CAF can set the agenda and stand for the right thing, as it did at the onset against apartheid. It reshaped football for the better and it still can.

Why does it continue to feel it needs to be subservient, to fall in line and be used? To close its eyes and ears? I am reminded of, when the bribery investigations engulfed FIFA, the sign that read: “Sepp Blatter. The only man that attends to Africa’s problems.”

And how the former head of the Zambian FA likened receiving all the perks from him in exchange for votes regardless of whether good or not to “taking houses from Pablo Escobar using drug money.”

Now it happily goes along with Gianni Infantino, the “loyal friend” who did nothing when Omar Artan, the reigning African Referee of the Year was robbed of his World Cup dream, and fans from the continent couldn’t travel due to travel bans or the prohibitive visa bond of $15,000, which was dropped too late and even saw heroic Vozinha’s mother denied the chance to see his historic debut, who made grossly unfulfilled promises about the African Super League, pushed for the change in frequency of AFCON and got his way, ensured it was moved in 2025 to cater for the Club World Cup…

When coaches, players and journalists accused CAF of ceding its best interests to make FIFA happy, Patrice Motsepe said “we have got to move on from this inferiority complex.”

It’s not those who were fighting on behalf of Africa that have the inferiority complex, it is those who don’t understand the scale of its power and great responsibility.

Infantino needs the continent way more than it needs him. Africa can and has to be better than him.

[Chelsea FC @ChelseaFC]

Spotted at Cobham. 🔍