South African resilience gives big thinkers hope for the future

South Africa might be in state capture ruins, with the highest unemployment rate in over a decade, terrifying levels of crime, poverty and inequality, but the country’s academics and thinkers believe there is a lot to be positive about.

They say the country is at a turning point and it is up to citizens whether to let it slide further downhill or use the country’s strengths to turn things around.

This was a common narrative amongst panellists during a discussion organised by the SA Jewish board of deputies in Houghton on Sunday. The panellists included veteran businessman and interim chairperson of the Public Investment Corporation Dr Reuel Khoza, University of Witwatersrand vice-chancellor Professor Adam Habib and Judge David Unterhalter.

Asked to give his prognosis of the country’s political and economic health, Khoza said: “We are by no means in intensive care]. We are in a state that can be called a little parlous because a number of things are not as they should be … but South Africans are resilient, we do have a way of turning things around.”

He said there was a greater need for citizens to realise that the country had 16% of Africa’s gross domestic product and was the best industrial and service destination.

President Cyril Ramaphosa’s haul in investment pledges of over R200 billion was testimony that SA was an attractive investment destination.

Unterhalter said South Africans tended to take a binary view that things are either bad or good, saying he believed the truth was in neither.

“SA is in a dilapidating state, we have to recognise that” but, he said, the courts had held up, under extraordinarily difficult circumstances in the past decade and this matters a lot.

A lot had been squandered but SA has the capacity to raise significant revenue and rebuild its revenue, he said.