Sometimes silences speak volumes.
In his seminal book The Anti-Politics Machine Stanford University anthropologist James Ferguson criticised the World Bank’s 1980s understanding of Lesotho as a “traditional subsistence peasant society.”
Apartheid’s migrant labour system was explicitly ignored by the bank, yet remittances from Basotho workers toiling in mines, factories and farms across the Caledon River accounted for 60% of rural people’s income:
South Africa faces a looming fiscal cliff owing to growth in social grant expenditure and civil service remuneration, combined with a slowdown in the growth of the economy. A fiscal cliff is when a country’s finances reach a potential crisis point where it can no longer sustain its existing expenditure levels.
Maize is a staple food in South Africa. Its production is likely to decline by half this year due to drought. The poor will be the hardest hit. Shutterstock
The South African media have been full of stories about the current drought that has gripped many parts of the northern and central regions of the country. The reporting has also been full of superlatives: this is the worst drought since 1992, for instance, or in other reports since 1984.
Nelson Mandela with his predecessor FW de Klerk. Tough questions are being raised about the compromises Mandela made for South Africa’s transition to democracy. Reuters/Peter
Is South Africa finally maturing to the point that the economic – not just political – compromises of the 1990s democratic transition can be reconsidered? When engaging student activists, for example, University of the Free State rector Jonathan Jansen frets that
In his latest speech addressed to party supporters, President Jacob Zuma vowed certain reforms in 2016, such as enhancing living standards for the nation’s poor and instilling a national minimum wage, according to Bloomberg Business. Zuma has faced considerable heat from the public for multiple shortcomings, including the failure to improve the economy or upgrade the electric grid. South Africa also suffers from a 25.5 percent unemployment rate.
A fine technocrat who did not wear his position on his sleeve, and known for tapping into his soft power of persuasion, Nhlanhla Nene has now been shunted out of South Africa’s National Treasury.
The man who was South Africa’s Finance Minister has been forced to make way for an obscure politician, David van Rooyen, who was on the backbenches of parliament.
Recent student protests over tuition fees, university staff and curricula, university autonomy and outsourcing have highlighted a number of issues facing South Africa. The agreement not to increase fees in 2016 has left the country with a short-term education-financing gap. The increasing demands for free university education leave it with a longer-term, and much bigger, financing issue.
Can South Africa meet the funding shortfall in 2016? Yes.
Can it afford free education for all? No. Someone will have to pay.
A country like South Africa, where rainfall is variable and unpredictable, has to plan for the worst. Specifically, it has to plan to manage the impacts of drought. For cities, present practice is to store enough water to supply the needs of each region during the worst conditions likely to occur in 50 years.
To meet that target for the growing population of Gauteng, the country’s economic hub, it must build a new dam. They already have a site, the Polihali Dam, identified as Phase 2 of the Lesotho Highlands Water Project.
Power outages and low commodity prices burden South Africa’s economy, which suffers from a 25.5 percent unemployment rate, according to Bloomberg Business. Overall employment increased in multiple sectors as more people join the workforce, but unemployment rose due to the commodities slide and low business morale. Slower demand from Asia is another cause for concern, most notably from China, which is one of South Africa’s largest export markets.
Minimum wages have played a central role in reducing inequality in countries as diverse as Indonesia, the UK, and Brazil. Traditionally seen as a means to ensure workers earn enough to meet their basic needs, minimum wages received more attention over the last two decades as a means to help create a more equitable society.
South Africa is one of the most unequal societies in the world with a Gini coefficient (where zero is perfect equality and one is perfect inequality) of a staggering 0.66, more than double the average of OECD countries.
