Want to venture a guess, calculated or otherwise, as to what this week’s column is all about? Does the title offer a hint? To contextualise, when considering the South African economy and its state, what two words would you use to describe it? Any chance that you have selected ‘limbo’ and ‘mediocris’?

The definition of ‘limbo’ is well known – it describes an uncertain or undecided state or condition. But have you thought about the limbo game, the main aim of which is for a player to pass under a horizontal bar, known as a limbo bar, without touching it with any part of their body? As the game progresses, the limbo bar is lowered, making it increasingly challenging to pass under it, until the last player completes the challenge successfully. Chubby Checker immortalised the game in his 1962 song, Limbo Rock.

As for ‘mediocris’, it is a Latin word meaning ordinary, average, fair, moderate or mediocre.

So, what do ‘going low’ and mediocrity have to do with the South African economy? Ironically, while the winner in the limbo game is the player who goes the lowest of all, that is not the aim for a country’s economic competitiveness. Do you now have an answer to the question I posed earlier?

I recall a business cartoon strip from many years ago that left quite an impression on me. It depicted an analyst at his desk with the company share price reflected on a graph on the wall behind him. On the left-hand side of the graph, the share price is at an elevation and on the right it is quite evidently heading south. In the next frame, the boss walks in, looking quite perturbed when glancing at the graph. In a speech bubble, he asks the analyst what he was going to do about it. In the next frame, the analyst spins around, gets up, removes the graph from the wall and turns it upside down so that it reflects an upward trend. The cartoon concluded with a smiling boss leaving the office. Mission accomplished!

On June 18, the IMD World Competitiveness Center released its 2025 rankings of countries’ economic competitiveness. It states on its website, under the title ‘A word on competitiveness’: “An economy’s competitiveness cannot be reduced to its GDP, productivity or employment levels; it can be gauged only by considering a complex matrix of political, social and cultural dimensions. Economic competitiveness is synonymous with people’s quality of life, and governments play just as important a role as companies. How? Why? And in what ways does the constantly evolving macroeconomic landscape have an impact? The IMD World Competitiveness Center takes a global, regional, sub-regional, economic and ‘people’ lens, using external hard data and the results of a home-grown survey of senior executives in 69 global economies.”

The bit that might get lost in the text is: “Economic competitiveness is synonymous with people’s quality of life” – a reference to you and me. So, what has been happening to your quality of life in recent years?

As with the graph, the trend is south – South Africa fell four places to 64th out of 69, with only Mongolia, Türkiye, Nigeria, Namibia and Venezuela below it. The only other Southern African Customs Union member country, Botswana, is 59th.

The IMD identified five challenges in 2025: high unemployment and a lack of employment opportunities; corruption and poor government effectiveness; poorly located and inadequate infrastructure that limits social inclusion and economic growth; rising public debt levels amid a shrinking fiscal space; and a lack of decisive plans to revive the struggling economy – the usual suspects.

The ten ‘basic facts’: market size (15th), GDP (36th), GDP purchasing power parity (61st), real GDP growth (55th), inflation (56th), unemployment rate (68th), labour force (18th), current account balance (44th), direct investment stocks inward (43rd), and direct investment flows inward (43rd).

What’s to be done? A bit of wizardry might be required. Harry Potter’s creator, JK Rowling, famously said: “Rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.” The only thing is that, although close, South Africa has not hit rock bottom yet.