Unexpected gaffes and unimagined harm in the two years since key political economic review
Two years ago we published How SA Works — And Must Do Better. We wrote it because we believed a new approach was required to deal with the overwhelming challenge of unemployment. With one in three South Africans unemployed at the time, we argued that if this situation was not tackled, it would not only be impossible to sustainably lift many millions of people out of poverty, but the challenge of nation building would inevitably prove fraught. Since then, things have got considerably worse. Economic growth is down and unemployment is up, in effect now above 36%. The youth unemployment rate is still higher, with 58% of unemployed people aged between 15 and 34. This reflects a vicious cycle of low investor confidence, policy failure, rising corruption, faltering infrastructure and bureaucratic dysfunction. All of this arises from a toxic political environment, distracting from the task of development. At the moment, there is no hope at all of the National Development Plan (NDP) being i...
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