The Democratic Alliance (DA), which described the International Monetary Fund (IMF) loan to South Africa as a ‘watershed moment’, said the global organisation’s statement was a clear indication that ‘corruption is now an issue of international concern and embarrassment’.
The DA’s Geordin Hill-Lewis said in a statement: ‘The IMF, in its statement last night, called on the government to “manage the IMF’s emergency financial assistance with full transparency and accountability”. This is a clear indication that ANC corruption is now an issue of international concern and embarrassment.’
He pointed out that the IMF required finance minister Tito Mboweni to publish detailed monthly reports on the disbursement of Covid-19 relief funds, how it was spent, which companies were beneficiaries and who the directors of those companies were. He was also required to appear regularly before the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance to table these reports and face rigorous scrutiny and oversight from MPs, and to appoint a Special Inspector General for Covid-19 expenditure, with powers to interdict corruption before it happens.
The Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) on the other hand lambasted the R70 billion loan, which it said would ‘certainly undermine South Africa’s macroeconomic and fiscal policy sovereignty’.
The party said in a statement that President Cyril Ramaphosa ‘is proving to be the biggest danger to South Africa’s sovereignty against neocolonialism. Whilst he is allowing his colleagues and family to loot state resources, he is also sacrificing our country to the highest bidders on the altar of capitalist convenience.’
A day after the loan was announced, Stats SA revealed pre-pandemic job losses in South Africa’s non-agricultural formal sector of 3 000 between December 2019 and March 2020.
The drop was due to a falls in trade (-17 000), construction (-14 000) and manufacturing (-2 000 ). Increases were registered in community services (17 000), business services (8 000), mining (3 000) and transport (2 000).
Stats SA’s latest Quarterly Labour Force Survey put the official unemployment rate at 30.1%, the highest rate in the past decade.
Business grouping Business for South Africa (B4SA) predicted yesterday that the economy would take two years to recover from the pandemic and associated lockdown.
The head of B4SA’s economic working group, Martin Kingston, said the organisation expected the infection rate to have ‘a long tail-off’ and for the virus to remain a reality of daily life for up to two more years.
He said: ‘Against our latest modelling scenarios, we expect that it will take a minimum of two years for the South African economy to recover to pre-Covi-19 levels, keeping in mind that South Africa’s economy was already weak at the start of 2020.’
Positive cases grew in South Africa yesterday by 7 232 to a cumulative total of 459 761 (with 287 313 recoveries). Deaths rose by 190 to 7 257.
The highest tally of cases is in Gauteng (164 584), followed by the Western Cape (92 983), the Eastern Cape (75 067) and KwaZulu-Natal (68 101).
In other virus-related news
- Twitter withdrew a video retweeted by President Donald Trump in which doctors made allegedly false claims about the pandemic, after Facebook took similar action. ‘Tweets with the video are in violation of our Covid-19 misinformation policy,’ a Twitter spokesperson said, declining to give details on how many people had watched the video. The video, which shows a group of doctors claiming masks and lockdowns were not required to halt the disease, had been watched by 14 million people on Facebook before it was removed, according to media reports. Twitter also banned the president’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr, from tweeting for 12 hours after he posted a video about the drug hydroxychloroquine;
- The UN World Tourism Organisation said the pandemic had cost the global tourism industry $320bn in lost revenue between January and May, three times greater than the loss after the 2009 financial crisis. Tourist numbers fell by 300 million during the period, a 56% drop from the same time last year;
- The International Air Transport Association, representing 290 member airlines, said it would take until 2024 for passenger traffic to return to pre-pandemic levels; and
- Boris Johnson defended Britain’s decision to impose quarantine restrictions on Spain, warning there were ‘signs of a second wave’ of infections in some parts of Europe.