Why is Mr Ramaphosa like Mr Godot?

Waiting for Godot forms part of the Theatre of the Absurd and the principal characters are two tramps, Vladimir and Estragon, who sit under a tree waiting for Godot, who never arrives. Meanwhile, they converse, joke, fall asleep, relieve themselves, and wonder what to do next, although they do nothing. On the stage, we see the two men and a tree with no leaves. 

Eventually, someone does arrive and both the vagrants think it is Godot, but it is not. Instead, it is a boy who knows Godot and who promises he will come. In the second and last scene, the same boy arrives, denies he was the same person who arrived before, and again promises Godot will arrive. The only other characters are Pozzo and Lucky, who is held by a rope Pozzo carries; they make a brief entrance in both scenes. Eventually, Vladimir and Estragon decide that Godot is not coming and they should hang themselves. But they don’t - they fall asleep instead. 

I don’t know why this play tickles me so much: it's funny yet frustrating; so obviously filled with allegory yet it's also so deliberately meaningless; it's filled with pathos and oddly uplifting. Beckett hit a global nerve with the play which is now a classic, and he did the play a lot of credit by refusing to interpret it. One interviewer demanded to know the home address and curriculum vitae of Pozzo; Beckett replied that if he had known that, he would have put it in the play. It’s been deciphered in hundreds of different ways: as an allegory on war, revolution, psychology and existentialism, to name just a few. Wherever a duality mixed with unrequited desire presents itself, Godot seems to fit somehow.  

The English-language premiere was held at the Arts Theatre in London, directed by a 24-year-old, Peter Hall. Apparently, he told the cast during an early rehearsal, "I haven't really the foggiest idea what some of it means ... but if we stop and discuss every line we'll never open."

And we too in SA are waiting for our own Goddot: some semblance of moving forward, of making progress, of satisfying some goals. Not all. Just a few would do. Who am I kidding? Any goal would be great. Just one would be really satisfying. 

And so listening to Ramaphosa once again on a public stage talking about the future strikes us now not necessarily with pathos, but something close to it. The circumstances are different with the GNU in place, but it's a measure of how cautious South Africans are that SA public markets have remained somewhat muted. There have been improvements; the JSE for example, is up about 4% since the election, but then so are markets all around the world.

To put this into perspective, compare the current moment with what was known as the ‘Ramaphoria’ period in 2018. At that point, the JSE weighted average price-to-earnings ratio had risen from around 13x to around 19x. It then faded, got hit by Covid, rose, and then declined again to the 12x level it settled at before the election. It's now sitting at 13x, which is still 20 percentage points below its 20-year average. 

The commentary too is cautious. Nobody is getting carried away this time around. Investment professionals are now talking about the difference between actual investment in ‘on the ground’ projects, rather than portfolio investments. There are a lot of things to worry about locally and internationally too. 

Stock markets are generally future-predicting machines, but sometimes, they also want to meet Mr Godot face-to-face to see what he actually does, rather than what he says he intends to do.