A toxic mix of government stasis, creaking infrastructure and social unrest is prompting doubts about South Africa’s stability in a continent with too many economic scare stories.
It may, in the end, be events on a dusty patch of Highveld two hours’ drive from Johannesburg that end South Africa’s 18-year post-apartheid honeymoon.
In the weeks since dozens were killed in clashes between police and miners at Marikana, a wave of violent strikes has swept the South Africa, strangling vital mineral production and threatening fuel supplies.
Long pent-up anger at the slow pace of economic reform has come to the fore. More militant unions and political populists such Julius Malema are mining that rich seam of discord.
“Things are not rosy” said Mohammed Nalla, an economic analyst at Nedbank Capital in Johannesburg. “(The outlook) is deteriorating; we’ve got institutional decay and structural decay in the economy that is setting in.”
According to Nalla and others, the root of the problem is a lack of accountability at the top.