Introduction
The South African rand has slipped by ~8% against the U.S. dollar this year. The currency has become one of the worst-performing emerging market currencies in the world. The Brazil real, Turkish lira and Argentinian peso have also been weak performers. There are several reasons why the rand has performed so poorly. First, investors appear to be losing faith in Cyril Ramaphosa’s anti-corruption crusade spurred by the ANC party detractors. Second, the country’s economy has received rate downgrades from Fitch and S&P. Moody’s has said it will likely downgrade the country as well. Third,