DA's false Western Cape job claims: An exchange with Geordin Hill-Lewis: Part 2

This is the email exchange with DA Member of the Portfolio Committee on Trade and Industry Geordin Hill-Lewis about the DA's Western Cape job creation and employment claims following my letter to him (see here).

15 February 2019

Dear Mr Johnson

Thank you for your mail [see here], and thanks for reading my speech so assiduously. 

Attached is a brochure [Powerpoint "WC Presentation BT 10 years"] distributed by the WC government, which includes the number I used, and its source. In 2009 President Jacob Zuma promised 5 million jobs by 2020. The Western Cape is the ONLY province that has actually made its contribution to that goal. If the other 8 provinces had done the same, the country would have achieved the 5 million jobs target and our unemployment number would be markedly lower than it currently is. This should be celebrated. 

I don’t intend to respond to all of the issues you raise, except to say that I absolutely defend the use of the broad definition comparison. If someone has been looking for a job for so long that they’ve now given up, they are absolutely unemployed and should be counted as such. And on that score, the Western Cape is 14% points lower than the national average. 

Also, on what is a new job: If there is a real growth in the number of employed people, then these must be new jobs. I take your points about timing of vacancies and about growth in public sector jobs. It is tough to track exactly this growth in the Western Cape - if you have a data source for this, I’d be grateful, since such information is not readily forthcoming from State Owned Entities and national government departments. 

Lastly - the DA are not entrepreneurs, and only entrepreneurs create new jobs. But we do claim credit for working hard to create an environment in which it is easier and more favourable to create jobs. 

You are welcome to call me to discuss if you wish. 

Kind Regards,

Geordin Hill-Lewis
Member of Parliament (DA)

*

To: Geordin Hill-Lewis

Thank you for your prompt reply. 

By "credible information and facts" I meant information collated, reviewed and issued by a research organisation, not another (DA) politician's speech which cannot be considered independent by any stretch of the imagination. Obviously, Premier Zille's office obtained it from the WC government, so it's just as well I asked them and Wesgro to give an opinion.

Unfortunately, your source [Powerpoint presentation] is not independent or credible, at least not in this format – a political presentation/speech.  And coming from where it does, it's self-serving and self-referential.  The WC Treasury, which produces their annual Provincial Economic Outlook and Review, would have been a better source had they addressed the matters you/DA are taking credit for and I questioned (they don't, by the way). 

So, I cannot accept your source as meeting the standard I requested, never mind a minimum academic standard.  A Powerpoint presentation with bullet points doesn't begin to address what I say is the DA's fundamental problem/mistake in interpreting Stats SA's labour surveys.  You have not answered the two key questions contained in your and Mmusi Maimane's various statements: hundreds of thousands of new jobs have been created in the WC during the past 10 years, and it's solely due to the DA.

Your statement "what is a new job: if there is a real growth in the number of employed people, then these must be new jobs" is the key issue.  This is what I tried, and perhaps unsuccessfully, to explain.  Perhaps my analogy about a snapshot of a man standing on the street was too elaborate. 

The quarterly labour surveys don't say job numbers are the result of "new" or "created" jobs, or job shedding as the case may be – the economic activity behind the numbers is beyond its scope.  It's the reader's inference, DA's in this case, based on your misunderstanding and misinterpreting of the data that it means what you, but not Stats SA, think it means.  As I said, to determine if new jobs are being created, or lost, other economic data must be examined which neither you nor Maimane have done (you used a year-old political presentation).

I don't have a problem using the expanded, or real, rate of unemployment.  But it's practice for the user to say he is doing so to distinguish between the official rate. 

Last, since you don't have the number of public sector workers from 2009 to 2019, and this sector showed the most significant increase in the period, you must subtract their presumably significant numbers from the jobs the DA allegedly created in the WC.  I don't have the numbers either but you're in the best position to find out, perhaps a tabled question.

I'm satisfied you've been unable to refute my arguments and that your and Maimane's statements are without foundation and are spurious.  Unless you can independently verify it, repeating it constitutes making unverified or unverifiable claims, known these days as alternative facts.  The New England Journal of Medicine editorialised: "The process of interpreting data is seldom clear-cut, and it is easy to be unaware that the data are inadequate to support the conclusions.  Without the discipline of organizing and presenting their evidence, and without the criticism and revisions stimulated by the peer-review process, investigators may unconsciously misrepresent their work or exaggerate its importance". 

You and Maimane have repeated Zille's and WC government's questionable interpretation and conclusion of labour survey data or made the same mistakes they did.  And you're repeating it to citizens either from the National Assembly where we expect and the law requires members to speak the truth and provide the facts, or in official party statements and election manifestos.  You cannot claim the ANC or EFF are breaking the rules when you might be doing so too.  This supports my contention the DA lacks understanding of economics. 

In my Politicsweb article "Mmusi Maimane and DA economics" I wrote: "I get irritated with 'experts', academics, politicians and journalists who confuse and conflate issues and often mislead the public.  They're in positions of influence and are supposed to have the facts.  The lay public may take what they say and panic or arrive at the wrong conclusions ...  They must either employ better advisors or research the subject properly before opining".  It's a pity the DA's policy research unit failed to launch, according Gwen Ngwenya, because of lack of support.

I'll include these responses in my blog post and a link to the Powerpoint presentation.

Regards

Thomas Johnson

*

16 February 2019

Dear Mr Johnson

Thank you for your reply. 

My source is not a political presentation, it is StatsSA, as the slide show makes clear. 

On new jobs: If there is 1 job in total in one time period, and 3 jobs in total in the next time period, then there are 2 new jobs. Your painting that as something else is wilful misinterpretation. 

It is true that the public sector has grown fast, but not where the DA governs. We have stats on that. I said that we do not have stats on National government departments and state owned entities. 

Nevertheless, it is clear that you have your interpretation, and you are not open to persuasion, you are out to make a point. I wish you well in doing so, and regard this correspondence as closed. 

Kind Regards,

Geordin Hill-Lewis

Member of Parliament (DA)

*

Dear Mr Hill-Lewis

Your "source" you referred to and the attachment is the presentation, and in this context the few times Stats SA is cited is as secondary and indirect source. The presentation makes many declarative statements about provincial indicators without context or background which the reader or listener must take at face value.  It lists Stats SA as source in only three instances, none of them economic:

·         Access to basic services – twice on p36 (Non Financial Census for Municipalities & Community Survey 2016);
·         Access to  basic services continued p37 (no publication listed but presumably CS or GHS 2016);

·         Access to healthcare p46 (General Household Survey 2016).

Jobs and employment p4 – the matter in question – lists no source for its figures.  It's no point speculating where Zille or the person who prepared it got it from.  Therefore, your source - a political presentation/address - is unverified which you carelessly repeated in the Nationally Assembly. 

It's strange I should remind you but a presentation, speech or lecture has value as a source if and only if the speaker has expertise and provides sources of data or facts quoted so they can be independently confirmed and peer-reviewed.  In this case, its veracity is open to question because Zille, the presenter, is neither an economist, statistician nor related expert and the data she presents is not her own work product.  For her it's value as a source is once removed because she didn't prepare the presentation or compile the data but her staff probably did, and for you twice or three times removed because you're relying on it, i.e. the provenance of the information you used is unclear.  

You might have done it in good faith but it's worse because you presented Zille's arguably tendentious, good news picture as fact to the Assembly and people of South Africa when even a superficial examination of the presentation shows it's deficiencies from the fact-checking perspective and that it was a political address.  It's fine for what it was originally intended but nothing beyond that, certainly not what I asked for or with even remote academic value.

You barely touched on the substance of the issues I raise.  In both emails you respond to the key questions – did the DA create hundreds of thousands of new jobs between 2009 and 2019, and due to them, the WC has the lowest unemployment rate – with a couple of sentences.  In fact, to this you ask open-ended questions and speculate that an apparent increase in jobs from one period to the next must be, maybe, job creation and "new jobs".  You also don't say why the DA can take credit for it even in the unlikely event it's true despite having no control of economic policy and the macro-economy.  You provide no verifiable facts to support your and Maimane's dubious, politicking claims except the presentation which doesn't do so either. 

But when you can't provide the data or argue your end you allege I'm not open to persuasion!  You bridle when challenged.  Would you react the same if, say, an ANC member or one from the DA asked you the questions I'm asking or if asked at a public meeting?  Your reaction is typical of those who think bluster, insults and childish petulance are acceptable responses to logical and argumentative challenges, a hubristic tendency I often see among DA members to the public, which makes it worse and that for all their faults I don't see with the ANC.  It’s unacceptable when it happens in ordinary discourse but totally unacceptable for citizens' parliamentary representatives and public servants.

"My source is ... StatsSA as the slide show makes clear".  As I said, your source is not Stats SA and the Powerpoint presentation doesn't make it clear because (a) Stats SA is at best a secondary source where its data is used and (b) the presentation doesn't cite Stats SA on the jobs and employment pages. In your replies you cite no other sources.  If it is Stats SA, which publications?

I didn't intend this to be an endless debate.  I asked questions particularly for your sources which you appear not to have properly examined and unable to answer except, in the end, a tantrum.  In this election period politicians and parties shall be making promises they don't intend or can't keep.  But the DA claims it's better than every other party and even if one doesn't agree with you, your stated standards ought to be better.

As I said before, I shall post these latest responses to my blog.  Since it will be public I trust you won't object me copying Mmusi Maimane, James Selfe, Baleka Mbete and the source of your year-old information, Helen Zille.

Regards

Thomas Johnson

[End]