It is a balmy London Sunday afternoon. It is June 11. It is Groundhog Day. Well, for me it is. Just a few hours ago, an unwelcome event recurred. You might even say that it was “It’s déjà vu all over again”, to quote Yogi Berra. Yes, Yogi Berra, and not Yogi Bear. (Yogi Berra was an American professional baseball catcher, manager and coach, while Yogi Bear is a cartoon character who has appeared in numerous comic books, animated television shows and films.)

The Proteas choked. Not the flowers – South Africa’s cricket team. They lost in what was considered – not called – the quarterfinals of the International Cricket Council Champions Trophy. If you need reminding, South Africa lost by scoring a mere 191 in 44.3 overs. It did not finish its allotted 50 overs. India chased down the meagre total in a mere 38 overs. So decisive was the victory – 12 overs to spare.

I simply could not stomach the postmatch interviews. The pearls of wisdom usually imparted during postmatch interviews would do little to lighten my mood. How long can one hold out hope against hope? Albert Einstein famously defined insanity as “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”. Well, watching the South African cricket team in any major international cricket competition while anticipating the ultimate reward – a victory – now squarely falls within this definition.

So, what pearls of wisdom would one have missed? I offer a few: we let ourselves down, we did not put enough runs on the board, we learnt a lot from today, and we were simply not good enough on the day. If you really want to praise the opposition while deflecting attention from the team’s lack of performance, you simply need say: “The opposition were simply too good today. They outplayed us in all departments of the game.”

Talking of déjà vu all over again, on June 6, the National Treasury issued a media statement in response to news of the South African economy entering recession. Yes, the dreaded R word. It was a response to a release, days earlier, from Statistics South Africa on the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) for the first quarter of 2017. The figure put South Africa into a technical recession. So, officially, South Africa is technically in a recession. One could say the South African economy is choking. When it is supposed to grow, it falters.

A ‘recession’ is defined as a decline in GDP in two successive quarters. This is the second recession experienced in post-1994 South Africa, with the first attributable to international challenges.

Last year, the prospects of the South African economy for 2017 were talked up, as had been the case the year before. In the instalment of this column that was published on October 16, 2016, and was titled ‘Financial economists and the cheerleader effect’, I wrote that “the lesson that is seemingly not being learned in South Africa is the publication of overoptimistic economic growth forecasts at the end of each year and their continuous readjustment throughout the following year”. I concluded: “In the words of Frank Sonnenberg, one of the US’s Top 100 thought leaders, ‘lessons in life will be repeated until they are learned’”. Déjà vu or Groundhog Day?

According to the National Treasury’s media release of June 6, the worse-than-expected GDP outcome introduces significant downward bias to the GDP growth estimates communicated in the 2017 Budget Review, which projected 2017 GDP growth at 1.3%. In trying to put a positive spin on the release, the National Treasury suggested that, despite the GDP contraction, there are ‘green shoots’ that South Africa can leverage to boost its own economic growth outlook. These include improving global growth, stabilising commodity prices, more favourable climate conditions, reliable electricity supply and less volatile labour relations.

Are you convinced by this? How many of these factors are within South Africa’s control? Government’s control, that is. I can only think of reliable electricity supply, but if I was a betting man I would not even place a wager on it. And at what cost would such ‘reliability’ come? On June 6 – a busy day – it was reported that South Africa’s power utility, Eskom, was seeking a 20% price tariff increase from April 2018. In addition, free-to-air television channel eNCA quoted Eskom as saying that it hoped to increase the cost of bulk electricity supplies to municipalities by 27% from July 1, 2018.

Now, consider that South Africa’s unemployment rate currently stands at more than 27%, the highest level ever. Persistent administrative price increases such as those proposed by Eskom will surely lead to increased wage demands. If the increases Eskom is seeking are granted, then we must expect an increase in labour relations volatility.

As for favourable climate conditions, these, if they are forthcoming at all, cannot conceivably provide immediate relief. The expected improving global growth and stabilising commodity prices might well not have been anticipated prior to the developments in Europe, particularly the UK general elections on June 8, which ushered in a hung Parliament. If anything, the consequences of the elections, held in anticipation of the initiation of the UK’s Brexit negotiation with the European Union on June 19, are that, at present, the only international certainty is uncertainty. In such times of uncertainty, self-interest dominates. Remember the age-old adage – charity begins at home?

If the South African government believes that its self-inflicted economic challenges will, in large part, be remedied by international economic improvements, it is sorely mistaken and is exaggerating and even miscalculating South Africa’s international relevance.

The so-called five ‘green shoots’ remind me of what my father would say, quoting an old British Royal Marines catch phrase: “Tell it to the marines.” It is an contraction of the longer version: “Tell it to the marines because the sailors won’t believe you.”

It is quite apparent that the South African economy is choking. It is choking as a consequence of its own infliction.

This also reminds me of the dialogue in the 1993 movie, Groundhog Day, between Phil, trapped in the day, and Mrs Lancaster, the owner of a bed-and-breakfast where Phil is staying. Phil: “Do you ever have déjà vu, Mrs Lancaster?” Mrs Lancaster: ‘I don’t think so, but I could check with the kitchen.”