Tag: Sindile Vabaza

After years of sustained pressure especially from organisations like Sakeliga, the government relented in November last year and promulgated regulations stating that state-owned enterprises (SOEs) no longer have to comply with Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment (B-BBEE), requirements when awarding government contracts.

“While spending on government consumption has been held down over the last ten years, demand for public services has increased substantially. Meanwhile, as public employment in health, education and criminal justice has stagnated, employment by private companies providing the same services has surged.

According to government reports Britain’s new prime minister Liz Truss is planning to freeze household energy bills at broadly the current level this winter, using government-backed loans to energy suppliers.

A recent equal education report found that 80% of schools in South Africa are dysfunctional with endemic poverty, violence and a shortage of school materials plaguing these schools.

On 21 June, members of an anti-migrant group named Operation Dudula showed up at Park Station in Johannesburg vowing to shut down the station. They believed vendors operating there were not South African and therefore are taking away space from South Africans who cannot make ends meet.

In March this year, in a much-publicised interview (Neal Froneman gets frank about the lows, and highs, of doing business in South Africa), Sibanye-Stillwater CEO Neal Froneman heavily criticised the state of South Africa’s economy and government, citing a lack of leadership.

While much has been written about the need for structural reform in the economy, and the need for the government to have more investment friendly policies, it is also useful to look at where the government can cut costs to prevent South Africa falling off a fiscal cliff in the medium term.

According to the Global Peace Index for 2020 by the Institute of Economics and Peace (IEP), violence costs South Africa about 13% of its gross domestic product (GDP) per year. South Africa ranks as the 26th most costly in the world, totalling $97.4 billion, or $1,971 per capita (in PPP terms).

South Africa’s headline unemployment rate hit a record high of 34.4% in the second quarter of 2021, up from 32.6% in the first three months of the year as businesses shed staff resulting from the devastating economic impact of the COVID-19 lockdown.

Statistics South Africa has published the Quarterly Labour Force Survey (QFLS) for Q3 2021, showing how continued lockdown restrictions, load shedding, and the July riots impacted jobs in the country. The results show that the number of employed persons decreased by 660,000 in the third quarter of 2021 to 14.3 million.