Thomas Johnson - The Blog

The following explanation for South Africa's persistently high unemployment was posted on Reddit/AskSocialScience substack by a University of Cape Town MPhil PPE student. It's one of the more cogent I've encountered and unlike the trite reasons offered by government, media and mainstream analysts: This is a bit of a simplification, but essentially, the problem boils down to one of labour absorption: the private sector in SA is too small to employ the entire South African labour force.  The reason for this can be traced back to the early development of the South African economy, specifically during the colonial and subsequent Apartheid era.  Early industry in SA (here meaning mining) was developed around the exploitation of African labour, which was used as a readily available source of cheap labour to man a labour-intensive industry. Subsequent government policy largely backed this approach, setting up institutions like the homelands system as a means to provide a ready sou...

Politicians take credit for the good news they're not responsible for, but don't take blame when they are.  So it is that periodically the DA takes credit for the Western Cape having a lower unemployment rate than SA as a whole https://www.da.org.za/2024/05/western-cape-and-cape-town-have-the-best-jobs-and-service-delivery-record-in-south-africa-statssa. Misinterpreting the job data, they take credit for the number of employed persons that increased between their arbitrary reference periods (I suspect cherry picking when the data is favourable). They claim they are responsible for "new jobs" being "created" (https://www.gov.za/news/media-statements/western-cape-stats-sa-quarterly-labour-force-survey-30-oct-2018) and the province's or Cape Town's "upward economic trajectory" and so on.  These claims are unprovable, specious and even false. At best it's a chronic misunderstanding of how the economy works, which SA's politicians don...

Cape Town councillor Jack Miller's media release on DA speaker Felicity Purchase's ejecting him from council for using term "migrant": Thank you to everyone for the support! Yes, I am doing perfectly fine. And yes, it is true that I was thrown out of the Cape Town City Council earlier for using the word "migrant". On behalf of a local community in Cape Town I was giving a speech and raising an objection over some of the concerns that this community had. They were worried that the project's objective to build low-cost housing would not go to local residents, but rather would be allocated to economic migrants coming in from the Eastern Cape. This is a concern we have heard on countless occasions in our community work across Cape Town over the last two decades. I am not concerned that the EFF or the ANC took offense to the content of my speech. I am not there to keep them happy. I am there to share real life stories and issues from and for the people of the...

There's a short YouTube video of Cape Town mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis standing outside the civic centre holding pages he says is Stats SA's Quarterly Labour Force Survey. The video's title is "DA creates 86,000 jobs".  Looking like a pupil who won a medal for good marks, unable to contain himself, he points to a page and says Cape Town has 86,000 more jobs than - I didn't get which period - last quarter or last year.  Recently mayco for economic development James Vos similarly wrote in an advertorial they - he, DA and city - are personally responsible for the city's upward "economic trajectory". Little to no credit for citizens and business who actually do the work.  The DA keep making these unfounded, unprovable claims that they "created" x number new jobs in the Western Cape and Cape Town over a period. When Hill-Lewis was the DA's finance spokesman, he made a speech in Parliament claiming such. I emailed asking for evidence, which...

 The shit-show in the Oval Office last week where Donald Trump confronted the South African delegation led by Cyril Ramaphosa put the world's attention on an inconvenient truth SA society, that is, in particular ANC, ANC government, leftwing public intellectuals and mainstream media, prefer remain unspoken and unchallenged. From president to press, the left has reacted with outrage repudiating the 50 Afrikaner refugees to the US. They say the victimhood these people claim, a tiny minority of the Afrikaner population, is false.  But the left are the last to talk about fake victimhood. Just recently Ramaphosa was in Eastern Cape blaming the poor state of services on apartheid. And, they say, white males occupy most management positions which they're going to stop. Apartheid, the gift that keeps on giving. I once chatted with an Afrikaner, an acquaintance, about this and that. I incidentally mentioned the book on Cape Town's history I was reading. One chapter was about the dis...

 The City of Cape Town said it would introduce relief measures after protests against the proposed huge property rates and taxes increases in the 2025/2026 budget. These measures remain to be seen but it's unlikely to offset increases of over 20% for residents whose properties are valued over R3 million. The city has received 14,000 comments to the budget and has extended the period for comments. Below are my comments submitted: Comment on Cape Town's 2025/26 Budget DA opposes budget increases  In negotiations with the ANC-led coalition, the DA supported the 2% and then 0.5% VAT increases if it received concessions on other matters. But when these were not forthcoming, it turned 180 degrees and opposed the increases citing it was unaffordable to citizens and would worsen the poor economic conditions in the country.  Their main point, though, was Treasury could make savings in various departments by eliminating dysfunctional and unnecessary departments and wasteful expendi...

On his CapeTalk show this morning, host Lester Kiewit indicated nurses are not well remunerated. According to the internet, the average nurse salary is R330,000, a year (R27,500 a month). I daresay this excludes benefits. Public sector salaries across the board are generally above the private sector by - numbers vary - 30%. So public health nurses would earn more than their private peers. The average salary (across all employed) in SA is R28,200 per StatsSA so nurses are about there. Related, a Bhekikisa Health article republished in Daily Maverick a couple months ago quoted a Health Department official who stated junior doctors earn R800-900,000 a year (R66,000-75,000 a month) excluding overtime. A senior doctor over R1 million. That's one reason why they can't hire more doctors, he said.  Per internet, the average salary for an (experienced) private GP is R550K; starting salary for a junior GP R22K. Both categories are what professionals - lawyers, teachers, engineers etc - e...

The University of Cape Town (UCT) is broken, financially, organisationally and its ethos. This article explains why. When I saw the title of the op-ed "Universities under siege: UCT and the assault on its autonomy and academic freedom" by Nazeema Mohamed in Daily Maverick, I thought it was going to be about how UCT's academic freedom is being threatened from within, and threats to university freedom in general. She is a member of UCT's council. Instead, it was tirade against the Trump administration, Israel and UCT's donors who object to its resolution suspending academic ties with Israel. Although it's specifically about the US and other donors cancelling and threatening to cancel funding, Mohamed's wrath is directed against everyone who disagrees with UCT's council and executive policies and decisions.  I'd never heard of Mohamed until now. But then I don't know who most council members are. I suppose I should; I'm an alumnus who has the...

 I was shocked to read entry-level medical officers in public health earn R80-90,000 a month excluding overtime. This compared to R15-20,000 for other professionals like engineers, lawyers, accountants, etc. This reveals how unrealistically high public sector salaries are. It's well-known these workers, in all disciplines, earn more than their private sector peers - 30% is often given - for typically a lower standard of service. The unsustainable and irrational public employee costs over the past 30 years is partly to blame for SA being driven to a fiscal cliff in recent years.  According to the internet the average annual salary for an (experienced, private) general practitioner doctor is about R540,000. This excludes benefits like medical aid, pension etc that public workers take for granted. Private doctors must fund their own. The starting salary is around R222,000, similar to other junior professionals. They too, like white-collar workers in the private sector, work or ar...

 In 2000 South Africa's GDP was $152 billion. Its peers - developing and middle income countries - achieved an average 4.5% growth annually, including the bounce back after 2008 and Covid. Had SA reached that, or even a modest 3%, it would be around $1 trillion by now. The ANC has collectively made us poorer. Despite the evidence and suggestions and advice year in year out of what ought to be done, for the most part impartial experts, they refuse to change, the tax and spend policy being one of them. What's driving them is anybody's guess - communist/socialist ideology, their cornerstone NDR, fuelling their patronage and corrupt networks or just stupidity and naivete, or all of that. This week Ann Bernstein of the Centre for Democratic Enterprise wrote about her interview with Argentina's Minister of Deregulation and State Transformation Federico Sturzenegger. As she describes, Argentina had similar conditions to SA but incoming president Javier Milei told citizens ...

Recently Daily Maverick's Rebecca Davis wrote about the severe dysfunction at the Cape Town Master's Office (see Groundup's investigation 2019). Among other problems, Davis reported staff allegedly demanding payment from users to speed up paperwork and bypass queues. I'm curious why this is new news. She omitted to mention the Justice Department has known about this for a long time. In January 2022 then deputy minister John Jeffery made an "unannounced" visit and was "surprised" (sic) it was not operating effectively.  My mother died in July 2017 and the Master has still not finalised her will. The executor has had to submit the same documents numerous times (apparently they're getting lost) and make numerous visits, all in vain. In December 2021, at his suggestion, I emailed the master, Zureena Agulhas, to complain. She forwarded my email to staff directing them to attend to the matter. Only then, four years after the will was lodged, did he rec...

Australia has a housing crisis caused by decades-old bad policy. Among them was tax breaks for developers to build housing for investment purposes. Now housing, including rentals for tiny units, are unaffordable to many. Demand far exceeds supply. Cape Town has a housing problem which its developer-friendly policy exacerbates. Housing here is the most expensive in the country, pressured by foreign buyers, in-migration, Airbnb and digital nomads. A modest two-bedroom flat in a mid-tier suburb starts from R800,000, not even mentioning rents. The city's policy is to sell available land at a discount presuming developers would build "affordable housing [sic]" - monthly income under R29,000 (Groundup). This is middle income - these people can buy or rent on the open market. The first problem is the land will not be auctioned, a process where the highest bid wins. Do they accept the lowest offer? The other flaw is discounting land does not necessarily lead to genuinely affordab...

Columnist William Saunderson-Meyer writing this weekend (again) about Donald Trump's executive order suspending aid to South Africa and offering minorities refugee status. "One would have hoped that the blizzard of bad news would trigger just a modicum of introspection in the South African body politic. Alas, it seems not. There ensued a swooning media narrative depicting a plucky Ramaphosa dishing it out to that thuggish US lout kicking sand in our faces. Ramaphoria —the uncritical media-fuelled adoration of the president that characterised the early years of Ramaphosa’s first term but gradually waned in response to his inability to match inspiring speech with action — is definitely back in favour." (Note: in the early Ramaphosa presidency, Saunderson-Meyer too was a Ramaphoria, as was most of SA's elite.) "While there were bitterly few dispassionate journalistic assessments to be found, there was plenty of mockery by columnists and cartoonists of Afrikaners and...

US president Donald Trump threw the cat among the pigeons last week with his social media post South Africa was doing "bad things" to minorities and taking their land away (untrue, for now) and he was suspending aid. This was primarily about the Expropriation Act. SA's government and media, which frequently acts as a mouthpiece for the ANC, Daily Maverick's Stephen Grootes for example, wrote the Expropriation Act was fading from politics until Trump's statements. False. It's been in the public's subconscious since the ANC and Ramaphosa capitulated to the EFF's demand. If it was no longer headline news, why do the DA and others say they will test its constitutionality in court? Referring to taking a tough stand against Trump. Grootes wrote Ramaphosa can, when necessary, be forceful. I suppose given an opportunity anyone can show a different side. But political aggression is not him. There's no disputing he's a supine, weak and ineffectual leader...

 The South African establishment - ANC, DA, Parliamentarians and particularly commentators' and media's - reaction to Trump's suspension of aid to South Africa should be puzzling to anyone who is fixed in reality. Anyone who works in the NGO sector knows funding is not guaranteed and they are not entitled to it.  But to Trump, their reaction has been outrage, of "how dare he!", and as Rebecca Davis writes in Daily Maverick, "Trump se moer "!, quoting Parliamentarians' reaction. I worked for an NGO. The Western Cape Government funded us almost one sixth of the total budget. One year, out of the blue, just before our financial year end, they wrote funding would not be renewed the following year because our mission no longer met their funding requirements. It was untrue. We had reserves to cover perhaps one to two years. Fortunately, our director and fundraiser met their people (including at some time then premier Helen Zille) and the misunderstanding ...

One of Donald Trump's first decisions was suspending all foreign aid. This has thrown programmes around the world into chaos. South Africa receives funding for its HIV/AIDS programme via PEPFAR, which for now will continue. However, when the suspension was announced, there was panic, disbelief and outrage. Some media commentators incorrectly linked it to AfriForum lobbying Trump about the ANC's policies against minorities. But what is apparent is the South African government, politicians, including far-left like EFF who're enemies of "imperialist" United States, media and commentators came to be entitled to the funding.  Anyone who has worked for an NGO, as I have, knows funding is never guaranteed and could be cut at any time, for any reason. Often notice is very short although seldom as sudden as the case with USAID's. Speaking from the economics of it, I believe many foreign-funded health and education programmes in SA, if not the majority, should for the m...