South Africa heads down the rabbit hole

There are a number of obvious signs that South Africa is heading in the wrong direction.

Youth and general unemployment are on the rise, the SA Police Service is losing the war against criminals and the average South African is getting less bang for their buck.

What is less obvious and not reported on as much is how companies have delisted from Africa’s biggest bourse, the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE).

In 2022, 25 companies delisted, and last year there was a slight improvement on this number as only 22 decided to invest somewhere else. These are still alarmingly high numbers of delistings, as they outpaced the total number of listings for last year.

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For now, the JSE is still in its “pre-Economic Freedom Fighters in parliament era”, when the layman does not really care about what is going on there, although decisions and stock movements are directly affecting their lives, via the economy.

One of the prime reasons any stock exchange exists is so a listed company can raise capital, including you and me, referred to as noninstitutional investors.

Delistings ultimately mean South Africans have less opportunities for investments (i.e. less money in your future pocket) and the country’s economy shrinks, which results in less money in your present pocket.

As a man on the street trying to make ends meet, I am also trying to stretch my rands in Cyril’s economy.

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I am trying to identify renewable energy companies listed on the JSE – and this is proving more difficult than I thought.

You know you are in trouble when a dollar billionaire like Patrice Motsepe – through his African Rainbow Capital Investments, which owns telecommunications service provider Rain and Tyme Bank – is mulling over delisting from the JSE.

An ordinary citizen such as myself should not be struggling so much to find suitable companies to invest a measly sum of money into monthly, but this is where we are headed.

The decreasing number of JSE listings is yet another measure of a failing state, worsened by load shedding. Delistings also mean potential foreign investors will steer clear of the JSE, as they will not reap the desired rewards.

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