Dawie Roodt, a leading economist, feels other ratings agencies are likely to downgrade South Africa in the same way that Standard and Poor's did on Monday.
Roodt added that it would take South Africa two years to regain its investment status.
He said South Africa's economy had been performing well below potential for a long time - mostly because of the quality of its political leadership.
Roodt further stated that Standard and Poor's downgrade of South Africa's credit rating to junk status was expected, especially with the country's negative political climate.
"The downgrade simply means that this is likely to continue for quite a long period of time, so we need to make quite a few changes to South Africa. The most pressing change we need to conduct now is to make changes to our polictical leadership," Roodt said.
Roodt believes other ratings agencies, especially Moody's are likely to follow suit and downgrade the country's credit rating.
Moody's is expected to announce its rating on Friday.
Another ratings agency, Fitch is yet to announce its decision.
Meanwhile, the Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (Outa) has called on the ANC to recall President Jacob Zuma as the leader of the ruling party following the S&P downgrade.
Outa chairperson, Wayne Duvenage said the organisation urged the ANC’s leadership to recall Zuma and to take every possible step to ensure that he was stripped of his position as the president of South Africa.
He said South Africans could not allow this situation to continue and the ruling party would have to look toward themselves and their inability to take the issue seriously.
