SIYABONGA HADEBE: Why Capitec’s CEO is forcing SA to rethink its unemployment narrative

The outcry was swift when Capitec CEO Gerrie Fourie dared to challenge SA’s sacred unemployment statistics (“Capitec CEO argues SA’s jobless rate as low as 10%", June 10). “The unemployment rate is probably actually 10%,” he contended, arguing that Stats SA’s headline figure of 32.9% ignores the vibrant informal economy where “everyone is doing something”.

Critics were quick to dismiss him as ignorant, unscientific, even a “denialist”, with former statistician-general Pali Lehohla lambasting Fourie’s claims as “madness” and “lying”, vigorously defending Stats SA’s methodology (“Let’s not minimise the pain of the poor with ‘voodoo statistics’”, June 13). However, radio presenter Ashraf Garda noted the excessiveness of Lehohla’s tone, which masked a more profound discomfort: the suggestion that the black working poor might be doing more than merely suffering. Lehohla’s reaction was perhaps less about statistical integrity and more about guarding his institutional legacy at Stats SA by shutting down uncomfortable debate. 

Lehohla went further, labelling Fourie a “random businessman who profits from black communities” but “comments on a system he clearly doesn’t understand”. His successor, Risenga Maluleke, responded more diplomatically but firmly, stating that it was “incorrect and misleading” to suggest Stats SA fails to count informal work (“Stats SA’s numbers are open to contestation, but our methods are beyond reproach", June 10).

According to Maluleke, the institution adheres to International Labour Organisation (ILO) standards, which encompass “all forms of work”, including unregistered enterprises with fewer than five workers. 

Yet Fourie’s provocation, however imprecise, gestures towards a deeper truth: SA’s official unemployment rate is not merely a technical measure but a biopolitical artefact. This statistical technology renders millions of economically active people invisible. Michel Foucault’s concept of biopolitics helps us understand the stakes.

Labour statistics are not neutral; they are instruments of governance, determining whose work is visible, valued and protected — and whose is erased. SA’s fixation on the 32.9% figure reproduces a global image of suffering, reinforcing the country’s role as the “world’s orphan”, deserving aid and moral sympathy. However, in doing so it masks the ingenuity, endurance and labour of millions who survive outside the formal economy. This pervasive statistical invisibility has profound policy implications, extending even to the efficacy of social welfare programmes.

With about 24-million citizens reliant on state grants, supported by a mere 7.1-million taxpayers, the national welfare burden is immense. However, the undercounting of informal economic activity makes it exceptionally difficult to accurately target and administer these grants, as a significant portion of economically active citizens remain statistically invisible, potentially skewing perceived need and resource allocation. This disconnect further underscores how the current statistical framework inadvertently hinders effective governance and resource allocation. 

Indeed, Capitec’s CEO may not be incorrect. To start, most African countries report unemployment rates below 10%, while informality exceeds 85%, as seen in Zimbabwe (8.76%), Niger (0.4%), Nigeria (4.5%) and Ethiopia (3.34%). Then comes SA, with its large formal economy, sophisticated industries and an unemployment rate stubbornly above 30%.  

Stats SA estimates that the informal sector accounts for about 19.5% of total employment. However, the ILO places this figure closer to 40%, a 100% discrepancy. This gap underscores the contested politics of measurement and the ideological implications of rendering informality visible or invisible. It also shows that nothing is cast in stone, as some would want us to believe. 

One does not need to be an econometrist or a mathematician to sense that something in these figures does not add up. While Fourie may not be technically correct in a strict methodological sense, he must be heard in light of how unemployment is calculated globally. SA, Mexico, Brazil and China have economies that are more or less similar and are members of the ILO. But they seem to use similar methodologies yet reach different conclusions.

Fourie’s comparison to Mexico was not accidental. He drew attention to a paradox that defines global labour statistics: countries like India, where 90% of employment is informal, report unemployment rates below 5%. Mexico, with over 55% of its workforce in informal employment, also reports low official unemployment rates. Lehohla cannot explain why Zimbabwe or Brazil have low unemployment rates, and what they do differently. 

Even China, with over half its workforce in informal arrangements, manages to sustain unemployment figures around 5%. SA, by contrast, reports one of the highest unemployment rates in the world despite informal employment accounting for about 40% of its labour force. This disparity stems not from economic realities but from methodological choices. 

Countries like India and Brazil recognise informal livelihoods — whether street vendors, family-run shops or gig workers — as economically active. In contrast, SA’s Quarterly Labour Force Survey (QLFS), despite the best of intentions, adheres to technical definitions that frequently exclude the survivalist entrepreneur, such as the township hairdresser earning R500 a day, the informal car guard or the kasi vendor moving R20,000 worth of goods each month. The survey demands structured hours, employer records or tax identifiers, standards that deny informality’s amorphous but vital reality.

This exclusion is not just a statistical oversight — it is a form of biopower. As Foucault argued, states determine who is legible within governance systems and who is reduced to statistical non-being. In this sense, SA’s unemployment measure does not just reflect the economy; it produces economic invisibility. This echoes what Lehohla himself once called a “moral dilemma” — the perpetuation of racialised exclusion through categories that fail to capture black economic participation.  

With black South Africans experiencing an expanded unemployment rate of 40%, compared to just 7% among whites, this statistical system arguably deepens apartheid’s legacy of erasure. The point that is often overlooked in the broader debate is that high unemployment rates in countries like SA, Nigeria or India may not necessarily reflect a lack of employment opportunities, but rather the politics of reporting. Statistics and numbers are not neutral. They are political representations of reality, shaping public narratives and international perceptions. 

SA’s persistent portrayal of extreme unemployment, poverty and inequality is not just a matter of statistical accuracy, it could also be a deliberate positioning. This performance of distress has historical roots in the post-1994 “miracle” that sought to win global sympathy by presenting the country as a wounded democracy: a miracle baby of human rights and reconciliation. That orientation, which informs Lehohla’s vicious attack on Fourie or trade, industry & competition minister Parks Tau, remains entrenched in how we produce and report data.  

Even Tau has acknowledged that “the informal sector’s role has been understated for a long time” (“Parks Tau backs call by Capitec CEO for new approach to unemployment data", June 10). His admission marks a departure from the prevailing state narrative and supports Fourie’s core contention: current metrics systematically undervalue informal activity. Lehohla is equally unhappy with Tau, whom he claims does not know how to use his “holy" numbers. 

SA’s informality differs markedly from that of India or Brazil. First, it is employee-dominated: 66% of SA’s informal workers are employees, often precariously engaged in gig work such as delivery, driving or recycling, rather than self-employed entrepreneurs. The country’s informal sector is an informal distribution channel for large businesses, including SAB, MTN and Tiger Brands. By contrast, 67% of India’s informal workforce is self-employed, reflecting a more autonomous, entrepreneurial informal economy.

Second, SA’s informality is actively suppressed by state practice, through complex bylaws, repressive zoning laws, aggressive policing and licensing bottlenecks. A UCT-Harvard study found that SA’s “abnormally low” informality rate relative to its level of development, stems directly from such policy hostility (“Jobless article is incorrect", June 11). Thus, the criminalisation of informality exposes the coloniality of state sovereignty.  

It is therefore necessary to develop interventions that outrightly reject neoliberal conditionalities, instead applying Frantz Fanon’s critique of postcolonial state violence by centring the “wretched of the earth” in policy design. Unfortunately, statistics…

Third, SA’s economic structure is hyper-concentrated. Dominated by oligopolies such as Woolworths, Pick n Pay, Naspers and the Big Four banks, the formal economy aggressively marginalises microenterprises. Township retail spazas, for instance, struggle against vertically integrated supermarket chains that have scale advantages and control over their supply chains. This stranglehold prevents the informal sector from growing into a vibrant, autonomous engine of employment and production. 

Even where state policy recognises informal activity, such as in Gauteng’s “township economy" blueprint, it rarely dismantles the regulatory violence or monopolistic barriers preventing informal traders from scaling. The recent shift in informal enterprises towards home-based operations (27.9% in 2023, up from the majority street-based in 2001) and the stagnation of licensing (only 10.7% of informal enterprises were licensed in 2023) reveal a sector that is not thriving, but rather surviving under constant threat. 

Fourie’s call to “change the narrative” is therefore not just about perception; it is a policy imperative. SA must move beyond statistical formalism to embrace hybrid measurement tools such as combining QLFS data with anonymised financial data trails, digital platform records and mobile money flows, to map informal activity more accurately.  

Capitec’s data, encompassing more than 2-trillion township transaction points, could support this paradigm shift. More flexible ILO standards, such as those used in Brazil and Mexico, which count self-reported activity as employment, could offer a better fit.

Crucially, this must be paired with structural reform. As Tau argues, each informal business has a multiplier effect, feeding local economies, creating apprenticeships and anchoring community livelihoods. The legalisation of informal traders, simplified licensing, dignified trading spaces and policy protection from corporate monopolies are not concessions; they are the foundation of genuine economic inclusion. 

As University of the Western Cape professor Matthew Kofi Ocran puts it, true economic transformation requires “a structural change of the post-apartheid economy in a way that creates space for the black majority to participate fully”. This is not merely about metrics; it is about political economy. Until SA ends the colonial binary of “formal" versus the “zone of non-being" (informal), the statistical discourse on unemployment will remain both a technocratic failure and a moral indictment. 

Fourie is no statistician, but he struck a nerve, and perhaps for good reason. His “10%" claim may be methodologically weak, but it is politically potent. It exposes the silent violence of a measurement system that erases black labour and equates informality with idleness. Fourie’s provocation should not be dismissed. It should rather be rechannelled into a national reckoning: SA must see, support and liberate its invisible economy, or remain haunted by the ghosts it refuses to count. 

One might argue that if the ANC had engaged Capitec’s CEO earlier, rather than retreating behind denialism and bureaucratic rectitude, it might not be confronting electoral collapse today. Fourie’s thesis deserves support — not because it is technically perfect but because it demands we engage the political fictions embedded in our most sacred statistics.

It is unfortunate that debates of this nature, including the call for the nationalisation of the SA Reserve Bank, are always met with venom and extreme aggression, dismissing them as “denialism” and “madness” peddled by “barbarians at the gate” to submerge democratic participation. The deeply entrenched nature of some narratives and resistance to questioning foundational assumptions make it difficult to consider new perspectives seriously. 

• Hadebe is an independent commentator on socioeconomic, political and global issues.