Yet that may be going too far. There may be more resilience than perhaps allowed, with another global mega-crisis not foreordained and businesses probably toughing out difficult conditions where they can.

Yet obviously we are not at the top of our game. Instead, we seem daily to go out of our way to underperform our modest long-term norm of 3.5% GDP growth.

Not even achieving this modest ambition for any length of time (ever since 2007) may set alarm bells going that things can only get worse. Yet we probably have absorbed most of the slowdown implied in our many domestic foibles (as well as reflecting the global slowing).

The year 2012 has been disappointing, with GDP growth of only just over 2%. Yet there are good reasons to expect this to lift eventually, if glacially, rather than keep sliding indefinitely.

Some things are fully discounted in our very modest growth today. The supplyside constraints of the past five years (electricity, credit, transport export capacity, public sector technical skills) aren't necessarily getting worse (though better is different).

Eventually some of these will start to ease.

The global economy looks past its cyclical low point in this slowdown, driven mostly by European crisis and US fiscal cliff uncertainties in the private sector, austerity in public sectors, and many China-led emerging markets adjusting to slower export and GDP growth.

Ahead is a slightly faster US performance, once through the probable non-event of a fiscal cliff (releasing business confidence currently withheld). Also, China may prove to have some cyclical lift in it focusing on infrastructure and household spending following the property repression and export slowdown of recent times.

Europe is flirting with recession, deeply in places, less deeply in others, and barely out of it in Germany and France. Industrial output in the region is down, and is awaiting less of an austerity burden, some lift elsewhere in the world, and the positive effects of structural reform and weaker currency making itself felt.

Clearly, Europe will be no locomotive for many years to come. But parts of EM space may be getting to the end of their short-term cyclical slowdowns, and to start lifting anew in 2013, if very gradually.

Taken together, this probably makes 2012 the cyclical low point in the post-2009 world expansion, and can we look forward to a slight speed gain, even if it all remains very modest, driven by crisis-repair in Europe and the US and deep caution just about everywhere else (except in a few EM high flyers still doing 7% growth).

In our case, the December political leadership pick will be behind us shortly (though the 2014 general election will loom with renewed vigour).

More importantly, labour unrest is likely to remain a key feature, along with associated output losses. It is mostly this that made us fragile in 2012 and may repeat in 2013, though not necessarily in the same sectors.

Will business and households stay subdued or become less morose about prospects? Households may find their real income growth stabilizing after the falloff in 2012, as nominal wage growth may not keep falling.

Crucially, will business be more assertive in pursuing new market opportunities, especially in Africa, prepared to allocate some more budget for technology-driven fixed investment and new hiring?

The public sector has enormous infrastructure ambitions. Even if larger construction multinationals don't yet see much evidence of new mega-tenders, the smaller companies operating at municipal and provincial levels apparently have, according FNB/BER opinion surveys.

Though big projects may be slow in coming, these could with a lag start to trickle through, even if only (well) beyond 2013.

Meanwhile, retail, manufacturing and motor trade sales and output keep alive the impression, collaborated in large parts of the services sectors, that expansion in activity and income generation is being maintained.

Average house price gains may be only low single-digit, making nobody feel much better off, but at least the trend is positive and mortgage interest rates low.

Many companies are doing reasonably well, bonuses are back, the JSE All Share is flirting with new record levels and government bond yields are at decade-lows, together yielding positive wealth effects.

It may all be marginal stuff, as much the 2% GDP growth rate as the minimal wealth gains, but it may be more resilient than perhaps often thought as we contemplate 2013 prospects.

Surprises there will be, but also probably slightly less bad performances in many departments, lifting the nation back towards 3% growth, provided labour disturbances remain limited.

For even stronger growth we will have to wait for mid-decade, as much globally as locally, and then without a single large relapse.

It is a tough call, given our labour unrest.

Source: Cees Bruggemans, Chief Economist FNB