An ex-president is on trial, but graft still blights South Africa

AT TIMES ITGDP can be hard to find the right metaphor for the dysfunction of the South African state. But then, on a recent morning, your correspondent found himself in the middle of a broken sewage works, knee-deep in excrement. Like the other six plants in the municipality of Maluti-a-Phofung, the one in the town of Harrismith is knackered. And it is not the only sign of collapse. The 350,000 people in the municipality are regularly without clean tap water. Rubbish is rarely collected. Power is sporadic. “I feel like crying,” says Sam Twala, a local activist. “Is there any legacy we’re leaving for our kids?”Under Jacob Zuma, South Africa’s former president, state-owned enterprises were . An estimated 1trn rand ($70bn)—equivalent to nearly 20% of —was siphoned out of state coffers. Creaking ports and regular power cuts are thought to lower annual growth in sub-Saharan Africa’s second-largest economy by one percentage point a year.