Durban — The optimism with which the new year commenced has vanished with the news that South Africans are as much in debt as their country is.

With both spending huge amounts to service debt, little is left over to build and to live on.

While the DebtBusters quarterly debt index revealed that many indebted South Africans were turning to debt management to make the best of a bad situation, it is concerning that so many are so deeply in debt as to need external help. Fluctuating fuel prices have not helped matters, with transport costs accounting for a huge proportion of expenditure in low-income households.

It goes without saying that a lack of discipline is the cause of much financial strife, and the same goes for the state.

While President Cyril Ramaphosa gleefully listed the government’s achievements in providing water, electricity, housing and other amenities to the millions who did not have these in the past, these could have been significantly more impressive but for the corruption which pervades the public service.

Speaking to parliamentarians about ethics, state capture and corruption, Ramaphosa said they would not stop until all stolen money is recovered. Wishful thinking indeed.

And ironic because much of the stolen money could be found among those he was addressing, and because he is yet to properly account for the dollars stolen from his own home.

The effects of the widespread looting are felt locally in the form of dry taps in much of the city’s north, and nationally in the power cuts which stifle the economy.

It’s an economy which cannot take much more of a battering before the government is forced into its own debt management with the International Monetary Fund. It is against this backdrop that Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana will soon deliver his Budget speech.

With the economy in peril, he will have to carefully balance the country’s rising debt levels against the demands made on the fiscus, without compromising the ANC in an election year.

Independent on Saturday

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New Year optimism vanishes in debt hole