SA to ‘dig itself out of the hole’ of downgrades, says Ramaphosa

South Africa’s precarious economic standing and its stance on sex workers came under scrutiny in parliament yesterday, as Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa had to answer to the National Assembly.

Replying to MPs’ pre-submitted questions, Ramaphosa said the downgrades to junk status and the hole South Africa had dug for itself couldn’t be taken lightly.

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“This is not a matter we should take lightly, because once you are downgraded you are basically having to dig your way out of a hole,” he said.

“You are basically in a situation where your debt is going to be more expensive, where you are going to start struggling a bit more to erase debt and providers aren’t going to be too enthusiastic to give or provide debt easily,” he said.

“They will be asking for an arm and a leg, so your interest [rate] is going to go up now.” To this end government was “vigorously” getting labour and business on board.

“We are facing a real challenge and a real problem that we need to have the level of decorum of talking productively about our country so that we can get out of this hole,” he said.

“What matters now is that we should dig our way out of this hole to come back onto the ground and make sure that we never get into a downgraded hole again.”

Ramaphosa, who also heads the South African National Aids Council, was taken to task about the legality of sex work.

He agreed with Economic Freedom Fighters MP Ntombovuyo Mente that there were contradictions in the law regarding criminalising the sale of sex, but not the buyer.

Ramaphosa insisted that a report from the Law Commission on the sex work industry was expected “very soon”, to howls from the opposition benches.

“Sex workers are just as great and good citizens as all of us and they need to have their rights protected,” said Ramaphosa.

Mente had asked why government hadn’t made a decision to decriminalise sex work, considering 130 000 sex workers resorted to the trade because of a lack of economic alternatives.

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