South Africa needs to create a manufacturing-for-export base. We are not Australia, the Lucky Country, which annually exports over three times the value of commodities we do - including over 50% of the world's lithium - with less than half our population.

"Real GDP contracted by a marginal -0.1% in the first quarter of 2024" - Stats SA, 4 June 2024

"The official unemployment rate was 32.9% in the first quarter of 2024... increasing by 0.8% from 32.1% in Q4 2023 to 32.9% in Q1 2024" - Stats SA, 14 May 2024

I recently wrote an opinion piece for Daily Maverick, titled "Deciphering the Rosetta Stone of world finance -- it's about to become a lot more disorderly".

In it, I mapped out how the world economy is gravitating towards being made up of two broad economic blocs: the Ecosystem of Capital and the Ecosystem of Trade.

The West inhabits the Ecosystem of Capital: this atmosphere is US-centric, US dollar-based and dominated by US capital markets: US equities accounted for 71% of the MSCI World Index while US bonds were 42% of the FTSE World Government Bond Index, both as of 31 May 2024.

Much of the rest breathes the other atmosphere, the Ecosystem of Trade: this is increasingly geared towards Asia, and, yes, within Asia, towards China.

Ostensibly it is still US dollar-based but one where value is more driven not by the US dollar at market rates but at...