There’s an old saying that goes along the lines of ‘There are decades where nothing happens, and there are weeks where decades happen.’
The recent US and SA elections made it one of those weeks.
But let’s start at the beginning.
2026 has been an unnecessarily turbulent year. It didn’t need to be this way. In January, both the global economy and South Africa were looking great. Inflation was low and declining, as were interest rates, and growth was on its way. What should have been a strong, risk-on world, favouring emerging markets like SA, was disrupted by the war and subsequent oil price hikes.
Turbulence happens, particularly in markets, when overexuberance leads to a correction, as with the dot-com crash in early 2000s, and potentially the current AI stock unwind.
But the turbulence in markets over the past two years has been politically induced. Last year, global markets were rocked by tariffs, and then, as soon as the world had digested that and moved on, 2026 saw the Iran war and subsequent fuel crisis send further shockwaves through the global economy.
And neither has been particularly successful.
In terms of the tariffs, the Supreme Court ruled the emergency-powers tariffs unlawful, and importers are now being refunded.
As for the war in Iran, the regime is still in charge, the Strait of Hormuz is closed and under Iranian control, they still hold a stockpile of enriched uranium, and the entire Middle East is significantly less stable. On top of that global growth is slower this year, inflation is higher and so too are interest rates.
The irony is that if Trump had not initiated both the tariffs and the war, the Republicans could have had a much better election result. Tariffs and geopolitics, in the minds of US voters, rank well below the cost of living, and the US voters are paying the price (literally) at the pumps and at the tills.
Meanwhile, back home, a day later, we held our own elections, and the ANC finally paid the price for taking public support for granted for so many years. SA is not a rich country, but we are not completely poor. It is long overdue, and would not be difficult, to uplift the lives of millions of the poorest South Africans just by ensuring that our massive health, education and social development budgets go to the hospitals, schools, doctors, nurses and teachers, rather than being siphoned off or squandered through incompetent spending.
That the ANC would fare poorly and that the DA would strengthen was predicted. What was not predicted was that disillusioned ANC voters would turn not to the populist EFF and MK (which both fell back from their 2024 national shares), but to ActionSA. For the economy, governance and stability, that is a good thing.
So what can the world potentially look forward to as a result of this past week?
Potential Iran war de-escalation, lower oil and fuel prices, lower inflation, interest rate relief, improved growth, some AI guardrails and less support for Putin: on the whole a calmer, less turbulent world.
From an SA perspective, a calmer world and a potential thawing in US/SA relations over time will hopefully result in a still noisy, but more rational and sensible political environment. Add declining fuel prices, inflation and easing interest rate pressure, and we can hopefully get back on the growth trajectory we were on at the beginning of the year.
The outlook certainly looks a lot better.
