South Africa’s slump from “rising star” to “fallen angel” was not an abrupt overnight downfall, but rather a slow slide following the country’s failure to fully recover from the devastating 2008/9 global crisis.

Despite the turmoil, the country had held on to its investment grade ratings for over 17 years – the longest of any of Standard and Poor’s (S&P’s) “fallen angels” countries that had lost their hard-gained investment status.

Since the start of South Africa’s steady stream of incremental ratings upgrades with S&P’s, in 1994, the country had secured its investment grading by 2000, moved onto its highest rating of BBB+ in 2005 and remained stable until 2012, when it received its first downgrade in years.

“If you look at it, it is a story over a long time,” S&P’s sovereign analyst Garner Rusike told delegates at a Department of Trade and Industry-hosted economic policy dialogue on Friday.

Russia maintained its investment grade rating for ten years, Slovakia 2.4 years and Hungary for 15 years.

After holding on to an investment grade for 17.1 years – the longest standing of all countries that had worked its way to investment grade – S&P’s had dropped South Africa’s investment grading levels in 2012 and again in 2014, culminating again in the most significant cut, to subinvestment, earlier this year.

“There was a lot of improvement [over the years], but since the financial crisis, the tide turned,” he commented, adding that it could take South Africa anywhere from two to 19 years to win its investment grade status back.

S&P’s, which rates some 130 countries, indicated that, since the 1990s, there were 26 “rising stars”, countries that had shifted from noninvestment grade to investment grade, and 24 “fallen stars”, countries that lost their investment grade status.

Of the fallen stars, only nine countries have made it back to investment grade.

It took South Korea one year to get its investment grade restored and Indonesia, which had only recently been upgraded, 19.4 years, while India regained its investment status after 15-odd years and Romania in nearly six years.

Since 2010, Brazil, Croatia, Cyprus, Greece, Portugal, Tunisia and Russia had been downgraded to subinvestment grade and have yet to recover.

Rusike noted that it took, on average, about seven to eight years to be upgraded following a plunge into junk status.

“Some countries make it back. Some countries don’t,” he concluded.