Ayanda Sakhile Zulu | Intern | Free Market Foundation | mail me |
In a video clip that has gone viral on social media, a South African TikToker by the name of “Voice of RSA” (the Voice hereafter) aims at what he calls the dominance of “trickle-down economics”.
The TikToker argues that economic growth during the presidencies of Nelson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki was essentially jobless. He goes further to suggest that growth itself is a scam that only benefits the rich while inflating inequality. Without redistribution, he insists, the poor are left with mere crumbs. This perspective feeds the popular narrative of jobless growth in South Africa.
The notion of jobless growth in South Africa
The first fallacy in the Voice’s argument is the notion of jobless growth. This is the idea that the economy expanded under Mandela and Mbeki without producing jobs. The claim is common in left-leaning circles, but it has no credible basis. It persists largely for partisan reasons.
During Mandela’s presidency (1994–1999), the economy grew by an average of 2.5%. Total employment rose from 9.5 million to 11 million. Having said that, job creation couldn’t keep up with the growing labour force. As a result, unemployment rose from 16.5% in 1995 to 23.3% by 1999.
Under Mbeki, growth improved to 3.25%, and job creation picked up. Between 2003 and 2008, around 3 million jobs were added. Unemployment fell from 31% to 22.5%. While both leaders struggled with high unemployment, they did oversee meaningful and sustained job growth. These facts directly challenge the narrative of jobless growth in South Africa.
A default faith in redistribution
The second fallacy at the core of the Voice’s left-leaning outlook is the notion that the economy is a fixed pie whose growth only benefits the rich. It is a zero-sum logic that assumes the gain of one must come at the loss of another. In this view, the rise of the wealthy can only happen by keeping the poor down. This logic naturally leads to a default faith in redistribution, framed as the only way to share or “democratise” wealth.
But this widely discredited orthodoxy underpins much of our failed public policy and economic discourse. It misunderstands the basic nature of growth. The economy is not a static pie.
Economic growth is not a game of musical chairs with the same fixed rewards. As our Policy Officer Zakhele Mthembu argued in a recent column, the economy is a growing or shrinking entity. When it grows, it creates benefits across the board.
When individuals build businesses that offer value, the benefits don’t accrue solely to the rich. Those businesses create jobs. More people earn, more money circulates,and more investment flows back into the system. This was precisely what South Africa witnessed during Mbeki’s presidency.
A rise in black middle-class households
Economic growth did create jobs, and those jobs brought a measurable rise in black middle-class households. If growth only benefited the wealthy, how could this clear upward mobility be explained? Again, this counters the perception of jobless growth in South Africa.
How, too, can the living standards in successful, market-driven economies like Singapore or South Korea be explained? These countries used economic freedom to unlock entrepreneurial energy. That energy delivered prosperity. Are the only beneficiaries in these societies the rich? Or have most citizens across income levels seen their quality of life improve over time?
Another key point Mthembu raises is that in a freer economy, barriers to entry are minimal. Entrepreneurship is not strangled by red tape. Under those conditions, individuals can contribute value and thrive without that success coming at anyone’s expense. One person might own a large company that employs thousands. Another might run a small business that adds value in a different way. The free market is not about enforcing equal outcomes. Instead, it creates conditions where broad-based wealth creation is possible. When everyone has the freedom to trade and compete, the overall outcomes are overwhelmingly positive.
Failed policies and the impact on jobless growth
One of South Africa’s biggest economic challenges is that its public policy discourse remains rooted in the idea that growth is a zero-sum game. This thinking has shaped policies that actively inhibit entrepreneurship and wealth creation.
Black Economic Empowerment, for instance, is a redistributive policy that has failed to encourage actual growth. Far from rewarding wealth creation, it has punished it through a financially repressive model. This model extracts rent from existing capital without incentivising new investment or innovation.
Worse still, ordinary South Africans who try to run small businesses or hustle for a living are continuously harassed and criminalised by metro police officers. Meanwhile, politically connected elites who extract value from the private sector without producing anything receive undue praise as symbols of “black excellence” or whatever euphemism is used to mask blatant elite enrichment.
In conclusion
Until and unless this changes, the country’s stubbornly high unemployment rate will continue to balloon. By “this”, we mean the dominant mindset that sees freedom and markets as threats rather than tools for upliftment.
Until and unless the Voice comes to realise that growth, and not redistribution, is what’s needed to reboot the economy and get millions into meaningful work, the very inequality he rails against will persist and likely worsen.
The real path to reform lies not in recycling failed redistributive policies but in embracing a freer economy that encourages growth. This is the only way to produce outcomes that are both meaningful and inclusive. Embracing economic policies that genuinely create opportunities is the clearest path to ending the narrative of jobless growth in South Africa.
