SIKONATHI MANTSHANTSHA: The darkest hour is just before dawn
The real threat to growth and stability is the poverty of ideas among those we have elected to office
The darkest hour is just before dawn. Or so they say. But our long, dark night seems to go on forever. Economically and politically, the new dawn has long been promised. But alas, the sun refuses to rise. The data in the series of releases from Stats SA last week could not have come as a shock to a realistic observer. The sobering, if not tragic, facts they reveal about our economy show how long the journey ahead is, and how hard undoing the legacy of corruption will be. Sadly, we have merely scratched the surface in terms of growth-inducing reforms.
Stats SA told us, in the "Labour Force Survey", that the unemployment rate jumped to 29% in the second quarter. Close on a third of our compatriots remain without income-generating employment. And that is only the official number, which our government pretends is the unemployment rate. The real jobless number of 38.5% is too embarrassing to admit. The number of unemployed people in SA is 6.7-million. That is the combined populatio...
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