One of the great advantages of coming to Davos is the way it extracts you from insularity. For the most part, challenges faced by South Africa are little different to those faced by the other 6.95 billion members of humanity.

Topping everyone’s list right now is how the Fourth Industrial Revolution is skewing financial rewards. The super rich have become even more so, an Oxfam report showing that the 62 wealthiest people (2010: 388) together own as much as the bottom 3.5bn combined.

An interesting spinoff, though, is how this has impacted public trust. I got up before the sun yesterday morning to be on hand when Edelman took the wraps off its annual Trust Barometer, the 16th, compiled from interviews with 33 000 people worldwide. Key finding was how trust in Governments has fallen to its lowest ever, and in Developing countries to a level Richard Edelman described as “catastrophic.”

He highlighted Brazil and South Africa as the two countries doing worst. Among Brazilian citizens, who are in the process of impeaching their President, only 21% trust their Government. The comparative for South Africa is a heartbreaking 16%, lowest of all countries surveyed. Worse, the interviews were conducted in October and November. Before Nenegate.

From Biznews community member Greg Gow

AI was in Germany last week and saw how we as SA are viewed at this conference I attended. The conference was attended by people from all over the world. We are actually nothing and weseem to think we are this big player in world economics or at least some in the country think we are this high powered country everyone in the world needs. The rest of the world can actually do business and never need SA. I had a meeting the other day with two business contacts one of them being a very highly connected Indian person. He was telling me that it is very serious talk with the people he networks with that the whole Nene saga was engineered to increase the off shore Dollar value in the Rand amount for a few of the presidents thugs business connections. I have not read your Nene report so I’m not sure if you had an insight into this theory as well.

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