Not only is South Africa’s central bank letting down those aiming for an economic recovery based on reasonable interest rates, given 10 increases since late 2021 as the main SA Reserve Bank (SARB) “repo rate” soared from 3.5 to 8.25%.
According to the SA Reserve Bank, it has a constitutional “mandate to protect the value of the rand”.
But that approach isn’t working, given that the value of the rand to the dollar has collapsed periodically, especially once exchange controls were lifted, including the “Financial Rand” penalty for withdrawing funds from South Africa in 1995, and when permission for