Thomas Johnson - The Blog

Many articles I read like this one on The Conversation and elsewhere about poverty, inequality, development and related topics, and particularly those written from a sociological perspective, omit, ignore or avoid the elephant in the room of why South Africa is not meeting developmental goals or achieving minimum standards: poor to mediocre economic growth rates that’s been on a downward trend from a 5.6% high in 2006, the highest since 1980 (6.6%) to a low of 0.28% in 2016 (-1.5% in 2009).   While peer and less developed countries – Rwanda, Ethiopia and Kenya to name three – is achieving 6% and above, SA has lolled about in mediocrity without leadership and direction due to political and economic mismanagement and incompetence, officially sanctioned industrial protectionism and big business greed. One cannot begin to analyse why SA is not meeting development goals without understanding these factors. You don’t do so here and your analysis is the weaker for it because the...

In a statement last week DA leader Mmusi Maimane claimed the DA-led created 487 000 jobs since 2009. This is fake news and must be treated with caution. As the DA has often done, they claim credit for the for the Western Cape having the country's lowest unemployment rate, which is beyond their control. " The DA-led Western Cape is on the right track to creating opportunities for economic growth and jobs ." Maimane: "Since 2009 when the DA was elected in the Western Cape, 487 000 net new jobs have been created by the DA-led government. That’s why unemployment is the lowest in the country." Note the "that is why" logical connector. However, his claim is misleading, and since they ought to know better, a false interpretation of economic data. The Western Cape has historically had a lower than the national unemployment rate, even when it was ANC-run, for various factors.  In 2009 it was 19.2%, roughly where it’s at in 2018, compared to national 24.3...

“The biggest challenges facing the South African economy [are] poverty and inequality.” So says the writers of this article . The biggest challenges (for the sake of this discussion exclude political, educational, etc) are low/zero growth, unemployment and poverty. Compared to these, inequality is not a “real” problem although it’s made out to be. I don’t know why people conflate inequality with those indicators. I don’t expect politicians and journalists to know the distinction but academics and experts ought to know better before making such a reductive statement. Inequality is the disparity of wealth and income in a society, and while it’s an indicator of the success or failure of the egalitarian social democratic and economic ideal, it’s not the same in terms of bare bones social impact as poverty and unemployment. All societies have inequality but provided a people’s basic needs are met – food, shelter, security and so on – they can cope. A poor person will not obsess about...