Listening to the daily corruption report from the Commission of Inquiry into State Capture one can easily miss some shards of optimism glinting through the cloud cover.

Agriculture has come under the spotlight in South Africa. Not only did the severe droughts experienced in 2015 to 2016 highlight the sector’s importance to South Africa’s economic growth and job creation ambitions, the recent policy proposal on land expropriation without compensation drew attention to the agricultural sector’s importance in ensuring national food security, while also addressing inequality.

South Africa’s National Treasury has done an excellent job in the 2021 medium term budget policy statement of balancing the fiscal and political pressures forced on it by economic stagnation and the incoherence of government policy.