Now tell me that the headline did not evoke the thought of Donald Trump – even though there is an ‘h’, and not an ‘r’ after the ‘T’. The principle in question is also known as the Thumper’s Rule. The difference between a principle and a rule is that a principle internally motivates you to do the things that seem good and right, whereas a rule externally compels you, through force, threat or punishment, to do the things someone else has deemed to be good or right.

The origin of the Thumperian Principle is in the classics – the classic Walt Disney animation movie, Bambi. If you recall, Thumper is the young rabbit whose remarks that the fawn Bambi “is kinda wobbly” and that “he doesn’t walk too good”, led to the formulation of the principle. In response to Thumper’s observations, Thumper’s mother and father – two much wiser rabbits – react by saying: “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say nothing at all.”

When South Africa’s first-quarter gross domestic product (GDP) statistics were released, I thought of submitting a column with a headline only – reminiscent of those Christmas Oddity bestseller books (of various titles) filled with empty pages. It was not because I at a loss for words; rather, there was hardly anything nice to say. But then I remembered that columnists are paid in accordance with the number of words they write. (Truth be told, this practice of remuneration is no longer finding favour.) I doubt if the editor would have entertained the idea of a blank-page column. After all, this is an opinion column, and a blank page offers no opinion.

So, I will try my best to be ‘nice’ or ‘pleasant’ – for want of a better synonym. South Africa’s GDP contracted by 3.2% in the first quarter, the biggest contraction in ten years. I had to smile when I saw several news reports referencing it as “negative growth”. It sounded so chipper, when, in fact, it is an oxymoron, a contradiction in terms, if ever there was one.

It is difficult to find any positives when an economy contracts to this extent. Possibly the only positive that one can offer is that, next quarter, there will be growth, ‘positive growth’. There will be growth for the simple reason that GDP growth is based on a quarter-on-quarter comparison. Surely, next quarter cannot be worse than this one. Consequently, the South African economy will not enter a ‘technical recession’, for which the accepted definition is two consecutive quarters of economic contraction. When this happens, I have no doubt that pronouncements will be made that things are improving, which, of course, will be incorrect.

For each of the past four years, South Africa recorded a first-quarter GDP contraction, while, in 2018, the country also recorded a second-quarter GDP contraction. Thus, the economy was in a ‘technical recession’ in the first two quarters of 2018, but this was followed by denials.

For me, a trained economist, the worrying part is that South Africans need not be economists to explain the train wreck that is the South African economy. If you want to test yourself, grab a piece of paper and write down what you think the growth sectors in the South African economy were, and what you think are the ones that contracted.

Only three sectors posted growth, namely government (1.2%), finance (1.1%) and personal services (1.1%.), while seven contracted, these being agriculture (13.2%), mining (10.8%), manufacturing (8.8%), electricity (6.9%), transport (4.4%), trade (3.6%) and construction (2.2%).

I simply cannot see how the South African economy is going to generate any growth. I cannot, for the life of me, see what is going to be the economy’s engine of growth.