Thank God for the M1!

After the budget, Treasury hosted a lunch for leading private-sector economists on a rather lush country estate. And between pretty little fountains and white table cloths, lots of clever people got together to express their concerns about Treasury’s budget estimates, criticise new tax proposals and question the rationales behind our assumptions.

But this is Africa and people never arrive on time. So in a wise move, the organisers had scheduled a meet and greet session to introduce people to each other over coffee and cupcakes and create a buffer zone between the official start time and the time when people could reasonably be expected to be there (i.e. an hour later). Being German, I obviously arrived on time and suddenly found myself surrounded by a growing number of World Bank economists, journalists from South Africa’s biggest newspapers and senior managers from banks and businesses!

To this day, I am still convinced that I don’t actually know any economics at all and am still impressed with myself that I managed to get a job as an Economist! So while some of my friends would kill for the opportunity to get a World Bank opinion on the causes of the financial crisis, the possibility of a double dip and the probability of a V or L shaped recovery, I was desperately trying to find a topic that did not involve economics.

But about what do you talk to so many different but equally smart people, who think about economics 15 ½ out of 16 waking hours? On top of that, those people actually enjoy economics and genuinely want to talk about it all the time – especially at such a great opportunity like a Treasury lunch and with a Treasury employee! So the challenge was on: in order to avoid economics, I had to find a topic that would capture everyone’s attention and lead to a flourishing conversation with little chance of drifting back into economics! Relying on small talk about the weather was out of question - people in South Africa are too used to sunshine to get excited about it; equally talking about our respective countries wouldn’t really work as most of these people had no life outside work and had never appreciated their countries of posting!

But there is one topic that always excites people and captures everyone, provides little chance of return to economics and offers ample opportunities for sharing anecdotes and bringing the conversation to a personal level: Traffic!

Simply mentioning when I had to leave Pretoria to arrive at the country club on time got everyone on their toes and within seconds we were talking about the disastrous conditions of the roads, how blocked up they already were when we drove here and how bad it would be by the time we were done. We debated when the last chance was to avoid rush hour (we agreed on 2.30pm), shared stories of terrible accidents that had blocked up roads for hours and silly ones that had the same effect – like fallen over traffic cones! Then we moved on to glorifying public transport in other countries and fantasising about how amazing things would be when the Gautrain (the train connecting Joburg and Pretoria) would finally be running! And at that point, just as we were about to start comparing congestion in Brasilia with that in Johannesburg, we were called in to the presentation! Everyone almost seemed a bit sad and disappointed to abandon our exciting, lively and thrilling conversation for a lecture on economics and we separated having bonded on a personal level - united in our hatred of traffic in Joburg!

I’ve been in similar situations a few times since then and traffic has always saved me from boring and potentially embarassing talk about economics. So this brings me to say a sentence that – and I am pretty sure about this – has never ever ever been said before in the history of humankind:

Thank God for the M1!