You didn’t need a crystal ball to predict how 2019 would begin – with yet more evidence of corruption and malevolent greed among the ruling elite being put before the Zondo Commission of Enquiry in to State Capture.

It was perhaps to try and deflect attention away from all the dirt being dished on them that the ANC decided to hold yet another big birthday bash for itself even though the anniversary being celebrated seemed, to some commentators anyway, a pretty arbitrary one – 107 (100 you could understand, or even 110).

Cyril Ramaphosa and Jacob Zuma used the occasion to make a big public show of solidarity but – again you didn’t need to be a psychic to predict this – it was too good to last. Within a few weeks Zuma was accusing Ramaphosa of being “defeatist” because of his comments about South Africa’s “lost years”.

Zuma and his disastrous legacy have, it would seem, become Ramaphosa’s albatross…

In neighbouring Zimbabwe, a brutal crackdown by the army and police on people protesting an enormous petrol price hike dashed any lingering hopes that the end of the 37-year old rule of the autocratic leader Robert Mugabe, 14-months earlier, would lead to significant political reform.

On the 7^th February, President Cyril Ramaphosa delivered his much anticipated State of the Nation Address (SONA). While his plans to turn South Africa around were laudable, the jury is out on whether he will be able to deliver on his promises.

Within days of the speech the unions, led by COSATU, were throwing up obstacles in front of his proposed ESKOM reforms. As if to compound the general gloom over the future of the parastatal, this was immediately followed by more rolling black-outs.

The fact that this occurred so soon after SONA made some suspect deliberate sabotage. I certainly wondered if someone was trying to foil my plans – I had just sat down to draw a cartoon on the subject for the Weekend Witness when the lights went out…

The immediate and substantial risk ESKOM poses to the South African economy was also the main focus of Finance Minister, Tito Mboweni’s Budget Day speech. Promising “no free lunches” Mboweni said the Government would not bail-out the embattled power utility although he did allocate R23billion per annum for three-years as a support package with conditions.

Whether ESKOM can actually be fixed is open to question. So once again it is a case of “Watch this space…”

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