Beginning of the end for ANC

On Wednesday, Futuregrowth Asset Management told Bloomberg that, with immediate effect, it will stop lending billions of rands to state companies such as Eskom, IDC, Transnet, Sanral, the Land Bank and the DBSA (Development Bank of Southern Africa).

On Thursday, another one, namely Denmark’s Jyske Bank was the second money manager to say it won’t lend Eskom any more money.

These guys are sending us a loud and clear message that no more idiotic moves from the government will be tolerated, a message that the rating agencies apparently did not make clear enough to them. Either that, or it did not register with the bright sparks who run the top echelon of the government and the ANC.

But who can blame them? The government has had ample warning, but all it has done is undermine every move by Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan, pictured, who managed to pull a few rabbits out of the hat and persuade the rating agencies not to downgrade us.

This brought to mind Chase Manhattan Bank’s move, back in 1985 after PW Botha’s famous/ infamous “Rubicon Speech” that pulled the plug on apartheid South Africa by stating that it would no longer lend the country money and it wanted immediate repayment of outstanding loans.

Within days, its lead was followed by other financial institutions and the floodgates opened.

The consequence was interest rates going through the roof and a shrinking economy – and that was the beginning of the end for that government. Jean Michel, Bryanston