Ed i to r i a l s

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THIS YEAR’S REAL HEROES

n 2006, Time magazine made YOU the person of the year. It w a s n ’t, as

Iyou might think, a vote for the South African magazine, but rather a mirror-paged cover that paid homage to the millions of people who “controlled the information age” .

Derided as a cop-out and a marketing gimmick, it nonetheless made the point that the burgeoning powers of YouTube, Facebook, Wikipedia and MySpace — the social media pioneers — were all about the internet ’s most important component: its users.

And so, while the FM has made Cyril Ramaphosa 2022’s newsmaker, this year has really been about the South Africans who have kept it together during an interminable 12 months of vicious politics, economic uncertainty, appalling power cuts, rampant crime, and the dysfunction plaguing everyday existence.

Those who watched the ANC’s 55th elective conference, and the obsession with trading positions rather than discussing actual policy, wouldn’t have got much of a sense that party leaders cared about these realities.

Which isn’t to say other parties have behaved much better.

There is the EFF’s endless parliamentary distractions; ActionSA’s vile anti-immigration rhetoric; and the DA’s lack of basic EQ on full display on social media. Few of South Af r ic a’s office-holders seem to be focused on actually doing what their job entails: serving those who pay their salaries.

And yet, it’s the working- and middleclass taxpayers who are routinely ignored by state functionaries. And it’s the mushrooming indigent class, queuing for welfare grants, who remain at the mercy of populist politicians who have done little to open up avenues for a better economic life.

Business owners have lost hours inching a lo ng roads where traffic lights are dark, ignored by road traffic management authorities who, due to their delinquency, have no legitimate claim to a salary.

Yet these entrepreneurs pay staff despite factories being without power for hours. They wait while officials — whose salaries they pay — fail to answer phones, reply to queries, or do their jobs.

Those who can afford it have abandoned public health care and state education. Rather than rely on an inept police force, they shell out for private security and have bought inverters or generators to do Eskom’s job. Yet they keep paying the government, despite its a b s e nce .

Workers, and the poor, have it worse. They have no option but to rely on the state for health care and education, and risk their lives taking bashed-up taxis to work since buses are few. Trains, thanks to the shambolic management of the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa under the equally shambolic Fikile Mbalula, are absent.

Their take-home pay is dwarfed by the wages of the political elite. The average nominal South African salary (after deductions), according to the latest BankservAfrica economic index, was R15,489 in October.

Yet ministers draw a monthly salary of R206,000 and their deputies make R170,000 — and they get taxpayer-funded generators at home, so they can avoidlo a d- s he dd i ng .

Meanwhile, the country’s GDP per capita has gone backwards over the past 10 years — from $8,810 in 2011 to $6,994 by the end of 2021. This, right here, is evidence of a lost de c a de .

Our wish for 2023 is that a newly reelected Cyril Ramaphosa finally pays real attention to the economic tragedy happening on the ground, including among those who pay to keep the country running. x

FACING A GRIM FINALE

t’s been five years in coming,

Ibut it seems South Africa’ s most notorious company, Steinhoff, may have reached its sell-by date.

Last week, Steinhoff announced that shareholders will have to vote on a plan to hand over 80% of the company to creditors in exchange for deferring the repayment of debt from 2023 to 2026.

It means shareholders will retain just 20% of the company — bu t t h at ’s actually the best-case scenario: if they veto the plan, the financiers will take over the entire comp a ny .

It ’s a case of Hobson’s choice for shareholders, who have seen the value of R100,000 invested on December 1 2017 dwindle to R1,013 today. But after an earth-shattering fraud of R106bn, few would have expected Steinhoff to still be going.

That it has survived is due to its strong assets — including 51% in Pepkor (worth R37bn) and 78% of Pepco (worth an estimated R67bn). The problem is, they’re not chalking up profits fast enough to dent Steinhoff ’ s €10bn debt.

Some shareholders will grumble that Steinhoff surely had other options. But for those who hung on, it’ s a grim denouement. x

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