Well, there you have it.

When Jacob Zuma took over nine years ago (doesn’t that feel like another lifetime?), the South African economy suffered a recession within his first six months in office.

Fast forward to Cyril Ramaphosa’s first six months in charge, and it’s happened again.

These details via Bloomberg:

The economy unexpectedly contracted an annualized 0.7 percent in the second quarter from the previous three months, Pretoria-based Statistics South Africa said in a statement Tuesday. That compares with a decline of 2.6 percent in the first quarter and is the first recession since 2009.

The median estimate in a Bloomberg survey was for 0.6 percent expansion. The economy grew 0.4 percent from a year earlier.

To the depressing graph we go:

To be fair, I don’t think any South African president has ever been handed such a mess, and a captured mess at that, but it’s not the news that those with an eye on second-quarter results were hoping for.

More insight into why the results were poor:

Slack farming output and soft consumer spending has put pressure on Africa’s most-industrialized [sic] economy. Ramaphosa’s ascent to power since December initially boosted sentiment and the rand following Jacob Zuma’s corruption-plagued tenure of almost nine years, but that optimism has faded as structural reforms aren’t implemented fast enough and global trade wars, turmoil in other emerging markets sour sentiment.

The news caused the rand to take a dive against the US dollar. At the time of writing, the exchange rate sat at R15,20.

At least Cyril’s prized cattle are doing well, right?

[source:bloomberg]