Loan exploits a shift in sentiment

South Africa’s finance officials have been through the mill in recent months. It has been hard enough to keep the country’s hardline economic policy on track in the face of slowing growth but that was only one of a list of woes.

The situation has been worsened by the rand’s collapse late last year, political turmoil in neighbouring Zimbabwe, the ever-worsening Aids disaster, Argentina’s meltdown, a domestic banking crisis and the global market downturn.