SOUTH AFRICANS have dubbed this month “Janu-worry”. After Christmas and the summer holidays come the bills. A popular classified-advertising website is full of pleas for help. “Mashonisa [loan shark] urgently needed,” says a typical post. “No scammers.” Radio call-in shows offer catharsis and survival tips.

The rest of the year is tough on pocketbooks too. South Africans are the world’s most avid borrowers, according to the World Bank. A study published in 2014 showed that 86% had borrowed money in the previous year (see chart).

Most borrow from friends or family, but an astonishing 25m out of about 37m adult South Africans owe money to financial institutions or other corporate lenders (such as utilities or shops that allow them to buy now and pay later). To put that in context, fewer than 10m people are formally employed (although many more work on farms or in the informal economy, where statistics are not reliable). Small wonder that barely half are keeping up with their repayments, according to the National Credit Regulator, a government agency. Some of this overstretching stems from aspiration. Since the end of apartheid in 1994, a black middle class has rapidly emerged. Many people are eager to show that they have arrived, by flaunting a car, a new suit or a smartphone. But not all can keep up with the Khumalos. Economic growth is slow, and unemployment is either 28% (by the official measure) or 37% (by a more realistic estimate). Black South Africans with jobs often have to support a huge number of unemployed relatives. (This is colloquially known as the “black tax”.) The first person in a family to attend university or get a good salary is expected to pay for the schooling of younger relatives, and to foot the bill for funerals and other wallet-draining events. Deduct all this from a pay cheque and there may not be enough for groceries. “South Africans are borrowing for everyday needs,” says John Manyike, head of financial education for Old Mutual, an insurer. Many South Africans are ignorant of the basics of personal finance, a trait that transcends income levels. Neil Roets, who heads Debt Rescue, a debt-counselling firm, says new clients are first asked for their household budget. Most do not have one. “We get people coming in who earn very big salaries...and have never learned how to work with money,” Mr Roets says. The previous financial woes of Jacob Zuma, South Africa’s spendthrift president, have been well documented. When he was drowning in debt in 2005, and dependent on benefactors, he even received help from Nelson Mandela, who gave him 1m rand ($148,000 at the time).

For those with fewer rich friends than Mr Zuma, there are illegal loan sharks. Many of their customers have jobs, but get turned down by legal lenders because of their poor credit scores. This does not bother the mashonisas, who are adept at collecting bad debts. Not all use threats of violence. Some keep identification documents and bank cards as collateral. Others illegally hold electronic payment cards linked to the social security system. This lets them tap borrowers’ government welfare grants each month.

Legal lenders sometimes misbehave, too. Shoprite, one of the country’s biggest retailers, was fined 1m rand in September for “reckless lending”, after it failed to check properly whether consumers could afford to repay their loans. Cash Paymaster Services, a private company controversially given a government contract to manage welfare payments, has been accused of pushing loans and other financial products to welfare recipients and then deducting onerous repayments.

Lenders insist that they are righting one of the wrongs of apartheid, when black South Africans were not allowed to borrow, by bringing people into the financial system. They have a point. But little of the money they lend is invested in a business or in acquiring valuable skills. With interest rates high and financial literacy low, many loans lead to financial ruin. They may even widen the gap between rich and poor, since people who besmirch their credit records by missing payments on small loans will then struggle to get mortgages or business loans from banks.

Reckless lending also affects economic growth. Absenteeism rises alongside financial distress, since employees who have to service big loans sometimes cannot afford the minibus to work. Workplace fraud and theft also tend to increase when staff are indebted. Some debtors quit their jobs so they can crack open their pension pots to fend off creditors—and then reapply for the same position, says Mr Manyike.

Debt can even cause social instability. The often violent strikes at platinum mines that broke out in 2014, which slowed the national economic growth rate, were partly born of debt. Miners’ take-home pay was falling because lenders were getting court orders instructing their employers to deduct loan repayments directly from their salaries. In Marikana, where in 2012 police shot dead 34 miners after a lengthy strike, many workers had been caught in a nasty cycle of unsecured short-term loans.

There are, however, some encouraging signs of changes in consumer behaviour. The 2017 TransUnion Consumer Credit Index, which measures borrowing and repayment, notes a “marginal” improvement in the level of indebtedness. But it also warns that high unemployment and stagnant wages will keep households under pressure. Better regulations to clamp down on unscrupulous lending are being drafted. A sprightlier economy would help even more. Growth is expected to limp in at just 1.1% this year, after a recession in 2017. It needs to pick up quickly to help households and the state itself—public debt has climbed above 50% of GDP—pay down some of their crushing debt.