Citing “heightened political uncertainty”, the IMF cut its projections for 2017 economic growth in South Africa from 1% in July to 0.7% in its October report.“Despite more favourable commodity export prices and strong agricultural production,” the IMF expects “subdued growth” in South Africa due to political turmoil sapping consumer and business confidence.

Bucking the trend towards what Investec Chief Economist Annabel Bishop calls “a synchronised global upswing”, the lender said that it forecast a 1.1% growth rate in 2018 for South Africa. In this Investec podcast on the reasons behind the IMF cut, Annabel explains that while there have been “very strong inflows into our debt market” there have been “substantial outflows driven by negative sentiment due to political and economic uncertainty” in the run-up to the elections.

Calling the ANC elective conference at the end of the year a potential “game-changer”, Annabel says that if the winner is not favoured by the market, there is a “risk that we could see an acceleration in the foreign disinvestment outflow from South Africa”.