Where will South Africa sit in a fracturing world?

South Africa has traditionally sought to be non-aligned and, in our ‘mapping decoupling’ work, we placed it in neither the US nor the China camp. But recent developments suggest that it could be leaning towards the latter. If that’s the case, it might help China secure supplies of some key industrial metals such as chromium, platinum and palladium. And there could be a re-orientation of South Africa’s key manufacturing sector away from European supply chains and towards Chinese ones.