South Africans have watched in bewildered anxiety for days on end as the rand fell sharply against the US dollar and the British pound and chalked up several record lows against both foreign currencies.
In the past week the rand has dipped below the psychologically critical levels of six rand to the dollar and 10 rand to the pound sterling, leaving little doubt that there would be no significant improvement in the immediate future and generating despondency.
Newspapers have flagged the fall with posters charting each stage in the seemingly inexorable descent. "The nine-rand pound" a poster screamed at motorists, only to be superseded a couple of days later by another signalling that the exchange rate had plummeted to 10 rand to the pound.
Distress levels rose as memory came into play: under the old apartheid regime there was a crisis when the rand-dollar exchange rate reached 3.30-to-1, causing newspaper columnists to write scathingly about the "Botha Rand" and resulting in calls for the resignation of the then president, P. W. Botha, by the antigovernment press.
Some economists have attempted to induce composure. They talk of the "Asian contagion". South Africa, they explain, is an emerging market like many Asian countries and is caught up in a general movement of money out of emerging markets.
Australia and New Zealand have been similarly hard hit, losing a fifth of their value against the dollar during the rand's free fall, an economist told radio listeners. His perspective helped a bit, particularly for those (mainly white) South Africans who still dream of immigrating to Australasia.
But an economics professor rekindled anxiety by writing that Australia had managed the crisis more effectively by not hiking up central bank interest rates and thereby inhibiting economic growth.
Inevitably scapegoats are being sought, with politicians, voluble as always, taking the lead in the finger pointing exercise.
Mr Sam Shilowa, secretary-general of the powerful Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), criticised Reserve Bank Governor Chris Stals for raising the "repo rate" the rate at which the Reserve Bank lends money to commercial banks and thereby "choking" the economy.
Reflecting the widely-held view that "speculators" are to blame, he wanted to see them penalised. "Government needs to consider a package of measures which rewards those who invest in productive sectors of the economy and punish those who just put their money in speculative investments," he fulminated.
Mr Stals has been criticised for first raising the repo rate and then allowing it drop back when the crisis seemed to have passed. His approach is said to have signalled that the Reserve Bank was ambivalent in its defence of the rand.
Economist, Mr Mike Schussler, observed: "When the official repo rate changes a total of 12 per cent (either up or down) in a week, or about 2.5 per cent a day, then something called policy isn't working." As Mr Schussler put it: "Planning seems like Russian roulette. Sooner or later you catch the full hole. It isn't fun for anyone except speculators."
The attack on Mr Stals seemed to aggravate the crisis. It sparked reports that he was going to resign before his contract expires in a year's time. These reports sent the rand plunging in New York, forcing Deputy President, Mr Thabo Mbeki, to issue a statement that Mr Stals would remain in charge of the Reserve Bank until his contract ends.
But the ANC-led government has not escaped censure. A salient criticism is the failure of the ANC to silence the clamour of its alliance partners, the Congress of South African Trade Unions and the South African Communist Party, against its pro-capitalist economic policy, Growth, Employment and Redistribution (Gear). Thus, using a soccer metaphor Cosatu vice-president Connie September said: "Gear must go. Gear has been shown the red card." South Africa's premier financial journal, the Financial Mail, has identified the discordant voices of the tripartite alliance, as a cause though not necessarily the cause of the crisis.
The discordance sends out mixed signals to investors about the government's economic policy and helps to frighten them off, the journal reckons.
It argued that Mr Mbeki should take a firm line with the ANC's allies on Gear.
Its advice to Mr Mbeki was contained in a headline: "Now, Thabo, a time to lead."
The currency crisis is bad news for the ANC-led government particularly as higher interest rates mean that hopes of economic growth in the current financial year have all but been wiped out.
For a party which faces a general election by the end of July next year at the latest, and which already stands accused of reneging on 1994 election promises of "a better life for all", that is a distinctly inauspicious prospect.
