JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA - JUNE 03: Lebogang Maile (MEC for Finance and Economic Development) during the re-tabling of the Gauteng Provincial Budget for 2025/26 financial year at Gauteng Provincial Legislature on June 03, 2025 in Johannesburg, South Africa. The MEC outlines how the provincial government will use available resources to fund key priorities in this financial year, which include growing the economy, creating job opportunities and improving the delivery of public services to citizens. (Photo by Gallo Images/Lubabalo Lesolle)
If it wasn’t for artificial intelligence (AI), we wonder if there’d be any intelligence in the halls of the Gauteng provincial government.
Yesterday, finance MEC Lebogang Maile clearly had a little digital help in crafting his high-flown phrases in the speech announcing the provincial expenditure for the next year.
“The audacity of hope is about the courageous and stubborn refusal to not succumb to cynicism, despair or fear in the face of daunting challenges,” he said.
Audacity, certainly. But we hoped against hope that this ANC apparatchik would acknowledge that he borrowed the idea from former US president Barack Obama’s book, The Audacity of Hope.
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Around the same time, one of Maile’s bosses, ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula, was full of joy when he posted on X about the latest gross domestic product (GDP) figures.
“Well done, Mzansi! SA economy grew by 1:1% in 2025 and GDP grew by 0,4% in the 4th quarter.”
Mbaks needs a little help from AI, or maybe some time in the classroom with a good teacher of maths literacy.
Our population growth is just over 3% per annum, which means that, at 1.1% growth in GDP, South Africa is going backwards.
That’s something to be mourned, not celebrated… as Obama would tell you.
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