Cape Town - I

To start this entry on South Africa, I should remind the readers out there that since it is not my first visit to South Africa, I will not be so much descriptive as comparative. Some whites would say that I should compare the country to what it was in the good old days, while most blacks would say that this would be unfair since they do not have a past reference that they can call "the good old days".

As for me, the first thing that striked me is how obvious it is that the country is reaching its full capacity. The first sign is the robots (a typical South African word for traffic lights) not working at many major intersections. This is because of load shedding at the electricity utility. A friend told me it was a strategic game play by the utility so it could finally get more money from the government for its investment plans. Indeed, there has been little investment in the country over the last few years. It should be highlighted that the larger imbalance is on the savings side, with ver low savings rate, resulting in a huge current account deficit. Everybody is just buying and spending, instead of investing. I guess that after years of depravation the new emerging class is very impatient to consume. It is understandable, but the signs of strains abound. And the Reserve Bank had to act again this week with another interest rate hike. One newspaper headline read "Tito spoils Christmas", in reference to the Reserve Bank governor Tito Mboweni.

The next sign was that the local airline company I was to fly with was grounded because of security concerns over the maintenance of its fleet. A good sign that the airline regulator had the strength to ground an airline right at the start of the summer holidays. But another sign that the private companies are also not investing enough. So there I saw my plane grounded at the airport, while I had to buy another last minute ticket with one competitor.

The problems were fixed later in the week, and I could safely fly back to Cape Town with my normal ticket. I will keep you posted on how long it will take to get my refund.

In the meantime, you can always send me a sms to my local number 0027 82 531 23 99 and tell me what you thought about my comments and what aspects of local life and issues you would like to see be discussed here.