PETER BRUCE: Payback time as music stops and ANC runs out of chairs

As President Cyril Ramaphosa and his advisers strain every sinew to find replacement export markets for what we lose if US President Donald Trump’s 30% import tariffs on our exports to America cannot be reversed, it’s often hard to sympathise with them. 

It’s hard to imagine the capital the ANC has wasted in the 30 years it has been in power. William Gumede has calculated that R1-trillion (a thousand billion) has gone to just 100 ANC-connected elites through various BEE schemes in that time. I asked Gumede about how sure he is about his number and he says he probably undercounted. 

Between a third and a half of employable people don’t have jobs. Our cities and towns are a disgrace. Apart from a thin layer of companies still attracting capital, we are uninvestible. I have not heard anyone in years trying with any degree of success to make an investment case for our country. 

I’ve been trying to see into the fog that surrounds our trade talks with the US. Partly they involve ideas about encouraging US investment here and us making an effort there, but how on earth do you persuade even a fool to invest a cent in a country that in 2025 passes a law allowing expropriation of property without compensation? 

You can’t explain it away as something that would never happen, because if that’s so why is it on the statute books in the first place? 

We forget where investments come from anyway. Those private investors who already invest and employ South Africans here do it with funds provided by the pensions and savings of schoolteachers, truck drivers and hairdressers in their home countries. It is not money to play with.

I’ve been listening to ANC types bemoaning the Afrikaner groups that lobby the Trump administration for support. Foreign minister Ronald Lamola wants to charge them with treason, arguing that they are undermining the country.

But if 33% unemployment and unending crime and corruption on the back of the ANC are not high treason themselves, then asking for international support to stop it cannot be either. I blame apartheid — the fact is the ANC and its negligence and greed are in every way its progeny. 

We do excel in one export: our human capital. Everywhere in the world South Africans are sought-after. We work harder and complain less. There’s a huge new nuclear facility — Barakah —  in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) that is virtually run by South Africans. The four South Korean reactors are managed by South Africans. The chief adviser to the CEO of the UAE nuclear company is South African. And more than 150 South Africans of all colours work at the huge facility. 

A woman close to my heart was saved from certain death two years ago by a brilliant and diligent black (African) South African oncologist. Soon after she fully recovered from her cancer he emigrated to New Zealand, seeking a better and safer life for his family. 

You have to feel for Alistair Ruiters, Ramaphosa’s investment envoy, now almost into his second month in the US trying to stitch together a trade and investment deal to save this economy from Trump’s ignorant tariff tantrums. A true son of our soil, he can’t move without clearing every conversation he has with the department of trade, industry & competition, or agriculture, or international relations, or the presidency, or mineral resources, or energy, and many more. 

It’s a wonder that he has made the progress he has, and we should be thankful for his service. And when he’s done he’ll go home to his family. And home’s no longer in SA either.

• Bruce is a former editor of Business Day and the Financial Mail.