Emerging South

Excellent articles in South African's Financial 24 and The Financial Times:

Johannesburg - Finance Minister Trevor Manuel said on Tuesday evening that South Africans were not adequately saving for tomorrow and preferred instead to consume in a US-like manner. He said households were highly indebted and  "South Africa’s next government will have to depart radically from a decade of conservative economic policy if it is to defuse a “ticking bomb” of poverty, unemployment and crime that threatens to blow a hole in the investment climate, according to an ally of Jacob Zuma, the frontrunner to become president next year".
Clear language !

In the Financial times:
...However, Trevor Manuel, the finance minister, later warned that abandoning inflation targeting would hurt “the poor and needy” most, saying a far greater problem was rampant middle-class borrowing to fund “sporty cars [and] huge houses”...
...Mr Zuma and his backers have cultivated a base among the majority of South Africans who feel that a decade of fiscal restraint under Thabo Mbeki, the outgoing president, benefited foreign investors and a small black middle class but did little to raise living standards for the poor....
...Expectations of change are reaching astronomical levels...
...With a current account deficit now at 9 per cent of gross domestic product, South Africa is vulnerable to shifts in investor sentiment...
...Public works “on a mass scale” could in part be funded by lowering incentives for investors and a “maybe painful” adjustment to the corporate tax system...