Peacekeeping as Multilateralism: An African Perspective for Berlin
UN peacekeeping troops on patrol in the eastern DRC. In today's complex mediation landscape, marked by fragmentation and competition, the only way for the AU and the UN to retain some level of influence and advance solutions based on their principles is to tighten their cooperation, says the writer.
El-Ghassim Wane
On 13-14 May 2025, Germany will host the 8th Ministerial Peacekeeping Conference in Berlin, with 'The Future of Peacekeeping' as its overarching theme. This event, which will bring together the ministers of defence and foreign affairs from United Nations (UN) Member States, is part of the process launched after the 2015 Leaders' Summit to strengthen support for UN Peacekeeping.
As African delegations prepare for the Berlin discussions, guided by the Independent Study on the 'Future of Peacekeeping, New Models and Related Capabilities,' they can bring valuable perspectives informed by direct experience with peacekeeping operations across the continent. Their contributions take on particular significance at this critical moment when peacekeeping faces renewed challenges to its relevance.
Three points are worth mentioning here.
First, peacekeeping works. Academic studies consistently demonstrate that it is a cost-effective way of reducing armed conflict and protecting lives. It also strengthens national sovereignty, not only because it accompanied decolonisation processes in the past, but also because it can ultimately help states recover the exercise of their basic functions. The real-world impact of peacekeeping is visible in Sierra Leone, Côte d'Ivoire, and Liberia, which stand as compelling examples. Even in situations where there is no peace to keep, the positive impact of peacekeeping is evident.
Asserting that peacekeeping works is not to overlook its failures, and neither is it to overstate what it can achieve. Ultimately, missions operate under specific principles—consent of the parties, impartiality and restricted use of force—and their success primarily depends on the cooperation of host nations and conflict parties, as well as the support of the Security Council and the larger international community.
Second, UN and African Union (AU) operations are complementary pillars of a shared multilateral architecture. Neither institution should be viewed as a substitute for the other. The UN maintains significant comparative advantages, notably predictable financing, specialised expertise, and logistical capabilities. For its part, the AU has a demonstrated willingness to deploy missions in asymmetric environments. This also means that the successes and failures of UN and AU peace operations are interconnected.
Third, UN Peacekeeping is an embodiment of multilateralism in action. It brings together key constituencies and draws its strength from their consensus. The key role players here are the permanent and elected members of the UN Security Council, major financial contributors, host countries, and more than 120 countries, 40 of which are African, that have provided over two million uniformed peacekeepers to date.
Going forward, the AU and UN should devise practical ways to further strengthen their partnership.
As an immediate step, the two organisations should enhance their collaboration in support of ongoing UN peacekeeping operations in Africa. The UN missions can draw strength from the AU's political legitimacy, while the continent is both the immediate beneficiary of successes and the most affected by failures. The UN should routinely share mission information with the AU to foster its proactive support (this should, of course, be bidirectional). At the Security Council level, the African members can rally more effective support for peacekeeping operations by taking principled stances, driven by the relevant AU normative frameworks, and by leading discussions on the challenges confronting missions. This approach can help ensure that issues are addressed on their own merits rather than being caught in the crossfire of current geopolitical tensions.
As the two organisations continue to work together to facilitate coordinated support to UN peacekeeping missions, they may also wish to consider the feasibility of systematically embedding AU liaison missions in UN operations. This would give the AU better insight into the unique role that UN peacekeeping plays and a deeper appreciation of its challenges.
Additionally, the AU and UN should jointly examine how to leverage the peacekeeping models identified in the study. This should involve assessing how the models could be used to address situations of shared concern and how they might serve as frameworks for mission initiation, expansion, or drawdown. The AU and the UN could then, through joint scenario planning exercises, test these models against hypothetical crises.
While the study focused on UN operations, it holds lessons for the AU, particularly regarding capabilities needed to enhance mission effectiveness, including planning, leadership, strategic communications, and rapid deployment capabilities. As the AU reviews its Standby Force, these priority areas could inform its modernisation efforts. Similarly, the AU and the UN could work together to examine how the former might utilise the Peacekeeping Capability Readiness System (PCRS) to generate capabilities for its operations more effectively.
For peacekeeping to work more effectively, the AU and the UN need to step up their efforts towards peacemaking. This could entail the appointment of joint envoys as was done in the past, and the establishment of jointly led international contact groups or other similar structures. In today's complex mediation landscape, marked by fragmentation and competition, the only way for the AU and the UN to retain some level of influence and advance solutions based on their principles is to tighten their cooperation.
In this context, the AU would benefit from striking a better balance between the various conflict management tools provided for in the Peace and Security Council (PSC) Protocol. It should effectively reinvest in prevention and peacemaking—areas where it possesses genuine comparative advantages. While peace support operations are necessary, they consume disproportionate organisational resources and attention. A recalibrated approach would maximise the AU's impact across the conflict spectrum, while complementing UN efforts.
Finally, sustaining peacekeeping gains requires greater investment in structural prevention. The goal should be to effectively combine the AU's rich framework on governance, democracy and human rights (here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here), on the one hand, and the UN technical and resource capacity, on the other. Such an enhanced partnership would focus on three areas: assistance to individual African countries to implement the commitments made based on the African instruments; support to relevant African institutions mandated to follow up various aspects of the continent's governance and human rights agenda (here, here, here, here, here and here); and dissemination of the AU instruments to political, civil society and other actors to increase their level of awareness of the commitments entered into by their countries and foster greater accountability.
In a world defined by geopolitical tensions and facing heightened competition among various states, the Berlin Conference offers an opportunity to rally the broadest possible support for one of the most tested and enduring tools of multilateralism. For Africa, the stakes could not be higher. Given the asymmetric distribution of power between states and regions in the current international order, the multilateral system, for all its shortcomings, still offers the best way to advance the continent's interests by enabling coalition-building and providing institutional platforms that can amplify Africa's collective voice.
As African countries prepare for the Berlin Conference, it is worth recalling the July 1990 report on the Fundamental Changes Taking Place in the World and Their Implications for Africa, submitted by then OAU Secretary-General Salim Ahmed Salim. While stressing that 'the African response for the 1990s and beyond must […] be inward-looking, in that its major preoccupation [should] be to build Africa's inner strength,' he also emphasised that the continent 'must continue to court and nurture international solidarity.' In this respect, he urged that Africa must both strengthen its support for UN ideals and maintain the UN as the central focus of its multilateral diplomacy, recognising it as the continent's most vital forum for advancing its interests.
Three and a half decades later, these words of wisdom remain relevant.
* El-Ghassim Wane led the team that conducted the independent study on the Future of Peacekeeping, New Models and Related Capabilities. He served as Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General in Mali and head of MINUSMA, and assumed several other responsibilities in both the UN and the AU, including UN Assistant Secretary-General for Peacekeeping and Director for Peace and Security at the AU Commission.
** This article was originally published at https://www.accord.org.za/
*** The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of IOL, Independent Media or The African.
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Daily Maverick
3 hours ago
- Daily Maverick
Focusing on our formal colonial past obscures the inconvenient present (Part 1)
The corporate takeover of South African universities is the living legacy of Cecil John Rhodes, the mining magnate/politician. This ought to be a prime focus of students who describe themselves as radical, instead of dividing themselves on 'racial' lines. Part 1 in a two-part series. This year is the 10th anniversary of the student rebellion in South Africa and the explosion of the new concepts in popular discussion of colonialism and decolonisation. Forming a related group of ideas are decolonising the mind; a homogenous Africa, along with a similarly homogeneous Global South; and settler colonialism. Other than settler colonialism, which is for another time, this two-part series seeks to show why each of them is problematic. Decolonising the mind is arguably the most obfuscating, while also the most open to question. 1 Colonialism Colonialism is commonly understood as one country establishing and maintaining political and economic control over another territory and its people. Leading dictionaries, encyclopaedias and even the UN agree on this. The Oxford English Dictionary (2014) offers: 'The policy or practice of acquiring full or partial political control over another country… and exploiting it economically.' The Encyclopedia Britannica's version is more succinct: 'The control by one country over another area and its people.' For the UN's General Assembly, Resolution 1514, of 1960, colonialism is 'The subjection of peoples to alien subjugation, domination, and exploitation.' 2 Decolonisation It might surprise knowing that this term has conservative, anti-decolonisation origins, having been coined by the British and French 20th century administrations confronted by nationalist movements and anticolonial liberation struggles sweeping across Asia and Africa. The strategic aim of these colonial administrations was the orderly and prolonged transfer of political control to already established native elites who would minimise changes to the existing colonial architecture. In the 21st century, the term — now widely expanded — is still evoked by the elites in the former colonies. In many ways, sections of the broad left support versions of this conservative understanding of decolonisation, as Pranay Somayajula, a Washington DC-based writer, demonstrates. I shall be drawing on him in some of what follows. In many ways, this expanded use of decolonisation reflects the influence of 'coloniality', a school of thought that emerged in the 1990s in Latin America. Coloniality, in its critique of modernity, emphasises colonialism's importance in shaping modernity. Indeed, decolonial theorists often combine 'modernity' and 'coloniality' as a single term: modernity/coloniality. As two leading exponents of coloniality, Walter Mignolo and Catherine Walsh, write: The 'horizon' of decoloniality is not limited to 'the political independence of nation-states' or 'the confrontation with capitalism and the West,' but rather with 'the habits that modernity/coloniality implanted in all of us; with how modernity/coloniality has worked and continues to work to negate, disavow, distort and deny knowledges, subjectivities, world senses, and life visions'. Framing decolonisation in this way transforms it into a need for psychological liberation, a process of unlearning colonial ideology and reclaiming identity, dignity, and agency. The need to 'delink' from these Eurocentric systems of knowledge and power is, for them, a task whose goal is 'no longer to 'take hold of the state' but to engage in epistemic and subjective reconstitution' [On Decoloniality: Concepts, Analytics, Praxis (Durham: Duke University Press, 2018)] Such disavowals of modernity make it appealing to conservativism, in all its manifestations. Before suggesting what lies behind this development of decoloniality, which embraces all the major, current forms of Identity worldwide — be they racial, ethnic, cultural, religious, language or nation — held by the formerly colonised non-white people, it is important to recognise that Identity, regardless of which particular one, is a social construct. It follows from the rejection of biological essentialism as being without any scientific basis that there is nothing for the supposedly inferior people to prove. This applies to Identity, irrespective of which one different people choose. The challenge is to ensure that the prejudices of the most jaundiced of jingoists are not internalised. There is thus no need to invent cultural histories or celebrate the achievements by, specifically, members of former colonised people. Yet, it is precisely this need to disprove all the dogmas that is daily on display. Hindu nationalism is a prime example of this from Asia. Pranay Somayajula reminds us that, in their calls for a return to an imagined Hindu civilisational glory, a 'golden age', current Hindu leaders frequently invoke the language of overcoming a 'colonised mindset' and reviving so-called 'Indic consciousness' — the array of 'indigenous' philosophies, cosmologies, and epistemologies supposedly suppressed by centuries of Islamic and British colonisation alike. In its most exaggerated form, this atavism can be observed in the viral memes claiming that ancient Indians invented everything from aircraft to nuclear weapons to the internet. This need to invent their own culture or achievements resulted in Afro-Americans inventing their own Christmas, Kwanzaa, in 1966, with twenty-first century estimates of the number of Americans who celebrate Kwanzaa being between 500,000 and 2,000,000. Expressing the same need, African nationalists claimed — some still do — that the Pyramids and the Sphinx were built by black Africans, not Egyptian Arabs, with the Sphinx having been deliberately bombed in order to remove a characteristically African nose. Some black Africans, including those of African descent worldwide, of the Christian faith argue that Jesus was black. Moving on to South Africa, decolonisation hit us, from seemingly nowhere, when a few students at the University of Cape Town threw shit at a statue of Cecil John Rhodes in March 2015. Since then, it has blown across the whole of South Africa to be inhaled as fresh air. Conferences on the subject are big business; there's even a Decolonisation Foundation. To be anything less than exhilarated by the whirlwind is to run the risk of being roughly attacked as racist or reactionary. The gale has especially shaken universities: their need for a thoroughly decolonised makeover, including what is taught and by whom, is the new orthodoxy. During the student rebellion of 2015-17, those who shouted the loudest often made fools of themselves. The proposed rejection of science as a non-African, white Eurocentric imposition was reported across the world. Less well known but in the same league were the medical students who rejected a practical on ankle injuries because the lecturer, attempting to make it real life, had linked the injury to football and football was deemed to be an alien, non-African colonial import. In a similar vein was — and is — the automatic rejection of reading lists on technical subjects purely because the authors are from Europe or the US. Subjects such as architecture have been disavowed for being non-African. Expressions of this same drive for constantly disproving white prejudice was recognised, along with its implicit rebuke, by Mamphela Ramphele, a noted academic, besides being Steve Biko's one-time partner, who said 'we have largely bought into the lie that black people do not have the capacity to excel'. Exposing the lie is manifested in things such as: The need for street names to show that black people are capable of having their own heroes. The rejection of the Homo Naledi fossils because black people have not evolved from baboons. The national celebration following the first black South African to have climbed Mount Everest, a feat which, according to then president Thabo Mbeki, made all South Africans 'stick out our chests in justifiable pride and wonder'. The ANC Women's League's celebration (without any irony) that President Jacob Zuma had used a 'wholly black-owned' bank to pay his Public Prosecutor-ordered, maleficence-laden Nkandla bill. The league's secretary-general noted that the president's 'confidence in supporting black-owned businesses is humbling'. This bank subsequently turned out to be the notorious VBS! The celebration of 'Ubuntu' as a uniquely black South African contribution to world philosophy and ethics. The then minister of Agriculture and Land Affairs, Thoko Didiza, who in 2000 announced that the government wanted to build 'a core of successful black farmers in this country. We want to move away from a perception that only white farmers can make it commercially, and that subsistence farming is only for Africans'. For then president Jacob Zuma it was a case of: 'Let us solve African problems the African way, not the white man's way. Let us not be influenced by other cultures…' The need for black people to be rich to prove black ability and the consequent — and often unconscionable — conspicuous consumption to display black achievement. Thabo Mbeki, the urbane, cosmopolitan, British university-educated intellectual, surprised many by his evident internalisation of the most extreme views of supposedly biologically determined black behaviour. His denial of Aids stands testimony to his fear that the worst of white racism is accurate. Consider the following, for instance, from 11 August 2000: 'The white politician (a reference to Tony Leon who had attacked his Aids denialism) makes bold to speak openly of his disdain and contempt for African solutions to the challenges that face the peoples of our continent. According to him… these solutions, because they are African, could not but consist of pagan, savage, superstitious and unscientific responses typical of the African people, described by the white politician as resorting 'to snake-oil cures and quackery'… This racism has defined us who are African and black as primitive, pagan, slaves to the most irrational superstitions and inherently prone to brute violence.' Or, after referring to medical schools where black people were 'reminded of their role as germ carriers', Mbeki said: 'Thus does it happen that others who consider themselves to be our leaders take to the streets carrying their placards (evidently referring to trade union leaders and Aids activists) to demand that because we are germ carriers, and human beings of a lower order that cannot subject its (sic) passions to reason, we must perforce adopt strange opinions, to save a depraved and diseased people from perishing from self-inflicted disease… Convinced that we are but natural-born, promiscuous carriers of germs, unique in the world, they proclaim that our continent is doomed to an inevitable mortal end because of our unconquerable devotion to the sin of lust.' The gruesome reality of Aids rules out any irony in Mbeki's comments. Let me further make explicit and unequivocal that, notwithstanding the above, colonialism was both real and a primary determinant in shaping our history and socioeconomic architecture. In addition, the rediscovery of colonialism is essential to the final burial of the idea that apartheid — the racial organisation and structure of South Africa — began only in 1948, when the Calvinist Afrikaners, unlike the nice, liberal English, took over the running of South Africa. 3 The colonisation supposedly in need of decolonising the mind The left in South Africa, Europe and the US were/are leading advocates of a decolonisation centred on universities and what is taught there. With South Africa this time being the unusual vanguard, meant Britain and the US — particularly since the Black Lives Matter uprisings of summer 2020 — catching up with the demands made by South African students five years earlier. 'Among the most visible targets' of this catching up, Pranay Somayajula notes, 'were intellectual and cultural institutions — universities, museums, archives, and the like — which came under pressure to 'decolonise' through gestures such as land acknowledgments, renaming buildings, repatriating looted artifacts, and reworking curricula to more adequately 'centre' black and indigenous voices.' This forced European institutions to reckon with their complicity in nineteenth- and twentieth-century empires, North American institutions to reckon with their complicity in settler-colonial violence against the continent's indigenous peoples, and institutions to reckon with their complicity in the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Somayajula's conclusion is that this focus 'on the institutions that function as pillars of Western knowledge production constitutes in many ways an indictment of Western epistemology itself… Implicit in this critique of dominant forms of knowledge production is a call to uplift in their place the indigenous ways of knowing and being that have been suppressed by the same processes of colonial violence and dispossession in which these institutions were (and are) complicit.' South Africa's student rebellion of 2015-17 provides a case study of what this means in practice. The student who threw the poo at Rhodes' statue that sparked the rebellion came dressed as a mine worker. The Marikana Massacre of 2012 is a stark reminder that the problem is not colonialism, or Rhodes' dead legacy, but the awful power of his very-much-alive mining descendants, for whom colonialism is rightly history. The exclusive focusing on the colonial insult symbolised by Rhodes' statue leaves this living legacy untouched. Shouting for the removal of other 'white colonial' names — like in 'Jameson' Hall — makes it very easy for the university authorities to agree. It is easy for them to do so for it serves as a distractive anachronism. Focusing on our formal colonial past obscures the inconvenient present and its truth that UCT is heavily reliant on the various post-colonial forms of Rhodes' legacy for its current funding; a reliance reflected in so many of the corporate names that now festoon supposed 'academic' buildings. Indeed, the entire corporate takeover of all universities, not just UCT, is the living legacy of Rhodes, the mining magnate/politician. This ought to be a prime focus of students who describe themselves as radical. Instead, they divided themselves on so-called 'racial' lines and, as a final mocking irony, did so using the 'races' Rhodes did so much to institutionalise as part of his divide-and-rule legacy. His contribution to the forced creation of an African working class with a ready and self-replenishing supply of dirt-cheap labour for his gold mines is a prominent feature of his legacy. The supposedly 'black students' demanding the removal of the offending statue bring warmth to the coffins containing the heroes of the apartheid pantheon, beginning with Dr Hendrik Verwoerd. These apartheid architects argued that the four 'races' of apartheid South Africa reflected a natural order in which each 'race' had to live separate from the others because of their natural differences and in-born wishes. 'Coloureds' and 'Indians' are not black, according to the students who accused the formerly white universities of still being predominately 'white'. Students were not welcome at some of the student gatherings because of their 'whiteness', even though they fully supported the 'black' campaign to remove Rhodes from UCT as part of the decolonisation campaign that swept the country. Rhodes, too, would have greatly enjoyed this spectacle of how students allowed the 'races' he helped manufacture to divide themselves, even while campaigning against his 'colonial' legacy of dispossession and subjugation. Colour-coding access to scarce resources is the main hallmark of the new, post-apartheid, non-racial South Africa. We'll be returning to this issue in due course. The right wing has also been prolific in its understanding of what decolonising means. The well-known academic, Professor William Gumede, of Wits University, provides one such example in his 2022 Daily Maverick article, ' African economic transformation demands a radical shock to failed post-colonial system '. His article begins: 'Several types of collective mindset changes drove the astonishing industrial transformation of the East Asian developmental states from similar poverty levels to their African and developing country peers, to levels of development similar to or better than those of their former colonial occupiers.' And ends: 'If… South Africa and other African and developing countries want to mimic the extraordinary and radical economic transformation of the East Asian tiger economies, (they) will have to undergo drastic individual and collective mindset changes, and overhaul old institutions, behaviours and customs. Without such a shock to thinking patterns, they will stay locked in mass underdevelopment, poverty and instability.' A single word defines his remedy: entrepreneurship. It is this, he contends, that has transformed all four of the countries he mentions: Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore. What he singularly fails to mention is that the first three countries all owe their good fortune to the privileges the US allowed them as an integral part of the post-World War 2 challenge posed by both the Soviet Union and the then China. Highly selective perception is required to see Singapore as a success story, as detailed in 'Singapore — little to sing about despite Greg Mills' call for encores', my January 2024 response to a Daily Maverick article by Greg Mills. (This response is the only one never published by the Daily Maverick but is available on request.) Franz Fanon now enters the story with his seminal book, first published in 1952, Black Skin, White Masks. Many worldwide have long attributed the need to decolonise the mind to this book. Yet 'decolonise' does not appear in the book, not even once. It is, indeed, part of his book, The Wretched of the Earth. This difference is not an academic quibble. It alerts us to the confusions caused by the misuse of colonialism and why that matters. Considerably.
IOL News
5 hours ago
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S&P Global Ratings maintains positive outlook for South Africa's economy
The S&P Global logo is displayed on its offices in the financial district in New York City Image: File. S&P Global Ratings has said that the outlook for the country remains positive, during its South Africa Capital Markets Conference in Johannesburg on Wednesday. S&P global experts and industry leaders, engaged in dynamic panel discussions during the conference. Yann Le Pallec, President of S&P Global Ratings, highlighted Africa's potential for growth, particularly in sub-Saharan regions. He projected that the region's real GDP is expected to increase by 4% over the next two years, outperforming advanced economies that are anticipated to grow by a mere 1.5%. "Despite issues faced in African economies, there is potential to attract investment from all regions,' Le Pallec said, emphasising the continent's pivotal role in the global energy transition. Le Pallec addressed the pressing need for enhanced electricity access across Africa, noting that approximately 600 million people in sub-Saharan Africa currently lack reliable power. Video Player is loading. Play Video Play Unmute Current Time 0:00 / Duration -:- Loaded : 0% Stream Type LIVE Seek to live, currently behind live LIVE Remaining Time - 0:00 This is a modal window. Beginning of dialog window. Escape will cancel and close the window. Text Color White Black Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Background Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Transparent Window Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Transparent Semi-Transparent Opaque Font Size 50% 75% 100% 125% 150% 175% 200% 300% 400% Text Edge Style None Raised Depressed Uniform Dropshadow Font Family Proportional Sans-Serif Monospace Sans-Serif Proportional Serif Monospace Serif Casual Script Small Caps Reset restore all settings to the default values Done Close Modal Dialog End of dialog window. Advertisement Next Stay Close ✕ He mentioned the plans from both the World Bank and the African Development Bank to provide electricity access to 300 million individuals, demonstrating a commitment to improving infrastructure. G20 and the economy As experts convened on a panel to deliberate on the geopolitical climate and the implications of tariff policies, Danelee Masia, a senior economist at Deutsche Bank, underscored the need for South Africa to navigate the evolving global order. She stated that South Africa's strategic alliances with Middle Eastern countries could potentially bring in foreign direct investment, which is crucial for the nation's economic landscape. Jeff Gable, the head of Macro and Fixed Income Research at Absa, echoed the importance of US participation in the upcoming G20 conference. He warned that a lack of US engagement could overshadow the efforts made in preparing for the conference and detract from the discussions on pressing global issues. Growth in South Africa In terms of South Africa's growth, Annabel Bishop, the chief economist at Investec Bank, pointed out that the South African Reserve Bank has forecasted a mere 1% economic growth. Bishop attributed recent instability in the global financial markets to uncertainty surrounding tariffs and the Government of National Unity (GNU). She expressed cautious optimism that diplomatic negotiations could potentially lead to lower tariffs later in the year. "While we saw a pause and lot of negotiations on tariffs made from around the world, including South Africa's one where Ramaphosa and SA's team went to the White House and spoke about trade and other issues, it is key to understand that this process could allow for much lower tariffs later in the year," Bishop added. Bishop further said, "We have our forecast at 1.3% it could possibly drop to 1.2 or 1.1%,but we are optimistic that this year will see almost double of what economic growth came out of last year." Ravi Bhatia, a director and lead analyst at S&P Global Ratings, reiterated a positive outlook for South Africa, noting the nation's structural strengths and the ability to maintain a low inflation environment. Bhatia said, "That facilitates from a government point of view that it is relatively is easy to fund the deficit through domestic funding making for less exposure to foreign exchange risk and still have room on raising external financing. SA is fairly new on raising money from multilaterals, and they are working on that so what we seeing is they are able to finance. The GNU is good in that it survived despite many disagreements. Having other parties there alongside the ANC, it is putting reformist pressure on the ANC to push reforms at a faster rate. It has been impressive that despite the disagreements over the Budget, the GNU held together." "What we have not seen that it is delivering higher growth and that is where there is a bit of a disconnect. We still have around 1.5% in the forecast period we are looking at, it is not great because it means incomes in SA are flat. Efforts have been made in the fiscal space and a push towards fiscal consolidation. To unlock finance, the IMF (International Monetary Fund) will push the SA government to push their structural reforms and getting the SOEs (state-owned enterprises) in order. The macro story is quite good; the checks and balances between the Treasury and SARB are sound and not something the IMF will focus on. It will be more on structural reforms, SOEs and labour market reforms as well as higher growth, Bhatia said.
IOL News
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Rulani Mokwena linked with Pyramids FC job after Krunoslav Jurcic exit rumours
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