Mandela Predicts Recovery Of Rand

President Nelson Mandela predicted Saturday that the plunging South African rand will eventually regain the nearly 18 percent it has lost on international currency markets over the past two months.

“I am not alarmed,” Mandela told a local election rally in strife-torn KwaZulu-Natal province. “I know what is happening and there is nothing that I am going to do… . The rand will strengthen and reach the levels it has functioned at all along.”

The rand started falling in February on rumors Mandela was ill and plunged again when Finance Minister Chris Liebenberg, a banker, resigned and was replaced by Trevor Manuel, the trade minister and a former anti-apartheid activist.

Manuel, the first black to hold the finance portfolio, has lashed out at the financial markets for the rand’s continued fall and wondered aloud whether racism is to blame.