Our country is better place now than 20 years ago, but let's not get too carried away: Engaging Goldman Sachs's report, our doomsday prophets and nay-sayers?
The arch promoter of neo-liberal policies, Goldman Sachs, published a favourable 20-year review of SA earlier this month. The report is entitled "Two Decades of Freedom - What South Africa is doing with it, and what now needs to be done". It was warmly welcomed by Finance Minister, cde Pravin Gordhan, and the ANC's treasurer general, cde Zweli Mkhize.
Our comrades certainly have a point. It was pleasing to see how the Goldman Sachs report flummoxed our doomsday prophets, our nay-sayers in the media and opposition parties. It paints a very different picture from their "things are going from bad to worse", "it was better under apartheid" litany. Some of them accused Goldman Sachs of "sunshine journalism". Others, like Tony Leon, did ideological flip-flops, suddenly quoting from a (presumably hastily googled) left-leaning Rolling Stone exposé of the Goldman Sachs predatory track-record. Leon further asserted that it was largely pointless comparing present day SA with pre-1994. Rather compare us with our contemporary "peers", he suggested, implying that our past history no longer has much traction on the present.
Writing in the Daily Maverick, in an article reprinted in the Business Times, Richard Poplak, outdid himself in his anxiety to hold on to the "things are worse than ever", anti-ANC, anti-government viewpoint. He ended up exhibiting his own statistical illiteracy. "Goldman wants us to believe", he scoffs, "that while there is no change in the unemployment percentage, there are more actual people working." Yes, that is what the Report is saying, and yes that is what has actually happened. The explanation is simple - since 1994 the South African population has grown, and the number of work-seekers in particular has expanded. While there has been a net increase in the number of people working, unfortunately this has not brought the unemployment percentage down.
So what are some of the positive achievements listed by Goldman Sachs and that have so much miffed the Poplaks? They include:
- A trebling of South Africa's GDP from $136bn to $385bn since 1994;
- An increase from 13,8m (2001) to 23,5m (2010) of those in the LSM 5-10 bracket (LSM stands for Living Standards Measure, and brackets 5-10 are regarded as "middle" and "upper" strata).
- The reduction of those living below the poverty line to 9% of the population;
- The increase in the number of those receiving social grants rising from 2,4m (1994) to 16,1m in the present;
- Households with electricity rising from 58% in 1996 to 85% in 2011; and
- Labour productivity per worker trebling in a decade - from $8,800 (2002) to $25,600 (2012).
But if so many positive achievements have been notched up (and they have), why are there still crisis levels of poverty, inequality and unemployment? It is here that the Goldman Sachs report falters. It certainly notes the unemployment crisis, but it is unable to explain it and therefore to offer systemic responses to it.