Bank sees red lights for ANC

It is self evident that the political ebbs and flows within the leadership of any country has a profound corresponding influence on the wellbeing of the economy. So, as you would expect of a leading financial institution, a high-level think tank at Rand Merchant Bank has pursued the near sacrosanct dictum of follow the way the money flows.

The conclusion the bank reached in a report titled Political Views in a post Downgrade, post Gordhan SA, is that “the widening schisms within the South African social conscience – mirrored in the deep divisions threatening to pull the ruling party asunder – could very well cost the ANC the 2019 general elections”.

More specifically, that if Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma wins the succession race and follows her former husband, President Jacob Zuma, into the leadership of the ruling party, the ANC will fail at the polls.

It is a finding which has predictably stirred the ire of the ANC Women’s League, who made the point that ANC members elected the party leaders, not the bank.

But the findings of the bank’s think tank does point to the roiling discontent countrywide towards the Zuma regime and his autocratic response to criticism as the rumblings of the former public protector Thuli Madonsela’s State of Capture report and the reinstatement of the of 783 criminal charges facing the president rumble ominously like distant thunder.

It is also far from certain that the average voter is ready to embrace or endorse a female president – a truth brought home to Hillary Clinton by the brash Donald Trump in the US presidential race. Or that the former head of the African Union is universally seen as a credible candidate in her own right.

There is also no unanimity over the claims of billionaire unionist-turned-businessman Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa now he has reinvented himself as a politician.

Don’t bank on anything.