There is a line in Finance Minister Tito Mboweni’s brutally honest 2019 Budget Speech that I can’t get out of my head.
“We are borrowing R1.2bn a day.”
Read that again. Let it sink in. If you ever doubted that South Africa’s economy was in deep, deep trouble, doubt no more.
Some perspective: R1.2bn is the value of Bosasa’s biggest two tenders, combined, that we borrow per day. Or: with R1.2bn, you can build about 8 000 low-cost houses. And that is what we borrow per day.
We are borrowing just to keep the lights on, to service our debt and to keep the state ticking.
Any Grade 10 learner with a basic grasp of mathematics will tell you that we are doomed to fail if we keep on spending more than what we earn. It’s literally that simple.
Mboweni had the tough job of breaking this news to South Africans. He didn’t mince his words and his ANC colleagues sat stone-faced as he punted se
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