Thomas Johnson - The Blog

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...

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...

Cape Town's MyCiti Cape Flats phase under construction is arguably the single most significant example of wasteful expenditure in the city right now. Costing R8.5 billion, when complete, it will put Cape Town Stadium in second place.  UCT associate professor of civil engineering and transport, Romano del Mistro said at master's degree seminars I attended (2006/7) that public transport projects' costs must not exceed their benefit to citizens. He was talking about Gautrain, a very expensive political legacy project, but said the principle applied to MyCiti and other rapid bus transit systems too.  Already certain MyCiti routes in the City Bowl and Table View (the original route) have had to close because they were unviable. But the city's politicians and planners have not learned the lesson.  They're pushing ahead with another grand project - dedicated, exclusive bus lanes, sky bridges, expropriating houses to make way for the extra wide roads - rather than the simpl...

 The DA has repeatedly claimed that through their sole efforts they're creating jobs in the Western Cape, and, therefore, unemployment is the lowest in the country. The latest is Western Cape MEC for finance and economic opportunities Mireille Wenger (March 23) and Premier Alan Winde.  Both also mention, compared to nationally, the WC has a higher quality of life (HDI) and lower inequality - a negligibly lower Gini is purportedly proof of their success (note it's their success, not the people's who make the region what it is). Several years ago various DA members including then leader Mmusi Maimane and finance spokesman Geordin Hill-Lewis claimed the DA in the WC "created" between 400,000 and 600,000 "new jobs [sic]" (the number varied depending on the person speaking) between 2009 and 2019. They used either the official or expanded (discouraged jobseeker) unemployment rates, whichever was favourable to their interpretation of unemployment numbers. Incid...

In her column “ From the Inside ” on Daily Maverick yesterday, Western Cape Premier Helen Zille criticised President Jacob Zuma’s latest cabinet reshuffle – the 11th in eight year and second in seven months. She wrote: “Cabinet reshuffles hit provinces hard, largely because of their impact on co-operative governance that the Constitution requires on almost every issue. Building a constructive relationship between provincial MECs and national ministers is essential to getting the job done. It sets the context within which officials in different departments work together. And often a project requires co-operation between various departments at different levels simultaneously.” Cabinet changes for political rather than governance reasons will affect provinces in terms of inter-level communication. But provinces have their mandates until the next election and budgets for the year, so I'll wager that impact is minimal. More important is the long-term, systemic failure of the pub...