In case the headline confused you or made you wonder whether ‘shades of grey’ means “the situation does not make it clear what is right and what is wrong”, let me be clear: ‘greylisting’ is bad. In fact, it is dreadful.

Truth be told, it’s a new word to me. We are all familiar with ‘blacklisting’ – hopefully, only with the word, and not its consequences. Here is the kicker: a country that is ‘greylisted’ can and will (by most accounts) be ‘blacklisted’ internationally. So, the two are not so mutually exclusive.

If you do not contextualise your search properly, looking up ‘greylisting’ on the Internet might be challenging for your search engine. Simply searching for the word returns this top result from Wikipedia: “Greylisting is a method of defending email users against spam. A mail transfer agent using greylisting will ‘temporarily reject’ any email from a sender it does not recognise. If the mail is legitimate, the originating server will try again after a delay, and if sufficient time has elapsed, the email will be accepted.”

On July 15, several South African media outlets ran a story about South Africa’s possible ‘greylisting’. Don’t be concerned if you missed this; that’s because on the same day South African oranges made it on to the European Union Red List. If only it were lemons, in which case we would know what to do with them. Maybe we should think about making orange juice.

On the matter of ‘greylisting’, on June 10, www.polity.org.za, which, like this magazine, is part of the Creamer Media stable, ran an opinion piece titled ‘Reserve Bank warns that risk of FATF greylisting is high’. The opening paragraph sounded this stark warning: “South Africa is facing greylisting by the international Financial Action Task Force (FATF), the global money laundering and terrorist financing watchdog. This will have serious repercussions for the economy’s links to the global financial system and the last thing South Africa needs right now is another obstacle to doing business, along with yet another reason for foreign investors to shun the country.”

In essence, a ‘greylisted’ country is seen as being incapable of putting in place measures to counter money laundering and terrorism financing. If this does not send a shiver up or down your spine, then a quote from an www.enca.com article published on July 18 and titled ‘SA facing greylist risk’ surely should. The article stated: “The National Treasury recently conceded that, currently, South Africa cannot effectively deal with financial crimes and corruption.” It went on to say: “South Africa faces the risk of being greylisted. This could lead to financial blacklisting from global institutions and raise the country’s sovereign debt.”

So, which illustrious countries could South Africa join? In alphabetical order, the FATF’s ‘jurisdictions with strategic deficiencies’ are Albania, Barbados, Burkina Faso, Cambodia, Cayman Islands, Gibraltar, Haiti, Jamaica, Jordan, Mali, Morocco, Myanmar, Nicaragua, Pakistan, Panama, the Philippines, Senegal, South Sudan, Syria, Türkiye, Uganda, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen. Malta is not on this list because it is now classified as a “jurisdiction no longer subject to increased monitoring”.

The FATF says on its website: “When the FATF places a jurisdiction under increased monitoring, it means the country has committed to resolve swiftly the identified strategic deficiencies within agreed timeframes and is subject to increased monitoring. This list is often externally referred to as the ‘grey list’. The FATF and FATF-style regional bodies continue to work with the jurisdictions as they report on the progress achieved in addressing their strategic deficiencies.”

Will South Africa join this list?

I leave you with John Cleese’s best line, as principal Brian Stimpson in the 1986 movie Clockwise, which epitomises South Africa today: “It’s not the despair: I can cope with the despair. It’s the HOPE – that’s what’s killing me.”