THE BLOOM FACTOR: SA THEN & NOW

SA has in the past clawed its way back from the brink. Bear that in mind, as 1980s-style pessimism engulfs us now

Like so many FM readers, last week I reached for my stash of Scotch and poured myself a triple. I have a strong constitution, but I was shaken. I was reading the magazine and saw the latest story by my talented colleague Claire Bisseker, about the quarterly GDP numbers: “The horror, the horror: SA’S record GDP plunge”. The article went further: “The secondquarter contraction is SA’S biggest on record, and will hit the country’s faltering confidence.”

I had a double gulp of the Scottish waters. I wasn’t enjoying it, as I usually would; rather I was just numbing the pain. I suspect I am not the only one who was feeling somewhat despondent about the news. We all knew the contraction would be bad — but seeing the numbers is like a cold shower in June in the open air in the Maluti mountains. It’s bracing.

Unlike many people, however, I had a morsel from history I could cling to. I remembered a man I used to read about in my father’s Rand Daily Mail and other newspapers that were lying around when I was kid.

Anthony Bloom was chair of the Premier Group in the 1980s and was one of the very few white businesspeople who would criticise the apartheid government for its refusal to reform and abandon white minority rule. Bloom was also one of a handful of white business chiefs who defied apartheid leaders and went to meet the ANC in exile.

He could have just kept quiet and enjoyed the money, of course. Back in 1987, the Premier Group had, according to the Los Angeles Times, more than $1.4bn in assets and was making

$100m in profit. Instead, Bloom spoke up. He used his voice and his privileged position.

In June 1986, the dreadful PW Botha declared a state of emergency during which thousands of kids were detained without trial, tortured and harassed.

In July that year, Bloom wrote an article in The New York Times that reflected just how bad a predicament the SA economy was in.

It read: “As a businessman, I find myself having to deal with a range of challenges that would send my counterparts in the US into catatonic shock. They include double-digit inflation, double-digit interest rates, a debt moratorium and the cutting off of foreign credit, a banana republic currency, devastating unemployment coupled with incessant strikes and stayaways, employees detained without trial, politically motivated consumer boycotts — and the threat of international sanctions.”

Those were dark days. The future looked bleak. So bleak, in fact, that two years later, Bloom relocated to London, though he kept up his activism and spoke out against apartheid whenever he could.

How does a country come back from the kind of devastation described so eloquently by Bloom?

His words are familiar. My FM colleagues and I repeat them often in these pages, describing the economic destruction and political corruption that grip so many parts of our society. One recent occasion was when the moral and financial corruption around Covid-19 procurement came to light, which was particularly shocking and galling.

And yet, as the turnaround of the late 1980s showed, it is possible to change the narrative.

In the late 1980s internal pressure on Botha and his regime, international outrage, mass mobilisation by the United Democratic Front and various other factors led to SA’S change in course. From 1989, the racist laws began to collapse, and the next year, political prisoners and political organisations were unbanned.

There is another parallel. In 2015, when Jacob Zuma was playing Monopoly with the economy and

Dudu Myeni was running Eskom, SAA and other entities from Zuma’s house, many thought this was the end of us as a country. Yet now the state capture crowd are being exposed every day and, fingers crossed, they face a real threat of being jailed.

So how did this happen?

Well, first, we all got very shocked at the depth of our problems. Then civil society organised and spoke up in a united fashion. Right now, brave men and women need to do so again, to press for faster change and transformation. And if that happens, we might just make it.

For the time being, though, please pour me another Scotch.

As the turnaround of the late 1980s showed, it is possible to change the narrative