SA’s big business sector is nothing if not persistent. It put huge effort and resources into helping the government manage the Covid-19 pandemic. Without it, SA would have fared a lot worse, yet business seldom gets the credit it is due.
President Cyril Ramaphosa has been happy to grant business leaders an audience in his years in the Union Buildings. He listens and frequently agrees when they alert him to the ever more dysfunctional state of the economy and urge specific actions to arrest it. But that doesn’t mean he acts. Frequently nothing happens. Even if it does, as it finally did when the president overrode his ministers on energy reforms, the pace is too slow and the bureaucratic hurdles too rigid to halt the crisis. ...
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