Bonang Mohale: South Africa has all the markings of a failed state: The former Business Leadership SA chief executive and current chancellor of the University of the Free State highlighted unemployment as the biggest problem to address
Mohale said the two weeks of rampant looting in July 2021 was a time when the world was seeking regulatory certainty and political stability from South Africa but the people who were constitutionally mandated to protect the country stood by and did nothing.
Mohale added that the government and the private sector had to dedicate themselves to economic growth because the economic crisis has become a social crisis. “We need to address those things that keep us up at night, like corruption. This organised corruption has now fermented itself into organised crime,” he said.
Mohale listed other issues that underpin economic reform such as infrastructure investment in the hands of the private sector and the end of cadre deployment “because, if you were giving us your best candidate we would leave you alone, but you are giving us absolutely the worst”. He said the fundamental matter that must be urgently addressed is the energy problem. “The link between an accessible, reliable and predictable energy supplier as the fourth means of production and its role in growing economies is truly irrefutable.”