Thomas Johnson - The Blog

 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 ...

Finance minister Enoch Godongwana said pay increases for government workers contributed to the finance crisis. The SACP said workers mustn't be blamed though. (Elsewhere, they accused Western "imperialism" for petrol price increases, absolving their sponsor, Russia, as an oil and gas producer that tried to blackmail Europe.) He was was worried how about paying for the emergency Social Relief Distress aka Covid-19 Grant of R350. Government workers are the new elite. Under Zuma their numbers increased half a million to 2.7 million. They're a third of all employed people. For 30 years they've received above-inflation increases. They, including cabinet and executive, earn 20-30% more than private sector workers for similar posts.  The ANC doesn't care, though. They say people - their people, cadres - must eat. And they are ensured voter support from the extraordinarily large numbers of grant recipients. The public sector is overpaid, overstaffed, underemployed an...