Big strides in 20 years, but SA still faces challenges

DURING two decades of democracy, South Africa has made massive strides to improve the lives of millions of citizens, but huge challenges remain.

Experts gave their views about seven key challenges South Africa must tackle in the next 20 years:

Officially, about 25% of South Africa’s work force is unemployed, although the real figure is likely to be closer to 40%. Fixing employment remains a herculean task and one that successive democratic governments have been unable to crack.

“Massive capital investment is needed to finance a doubling of the rate of economic growth. If that is not achieved, there is no way that you can meet expectations,” said Frans Cronje of the South African Institute of Race Relations.

“A job-creating engine in the economy is not there,” said Investment Solutions economist Chris Hart, referring to a dearth of small busi- nesses. “It’s not that we don’t have small to medium enterprises. It’s just that we have too few.”

University enrolment has skyrocketed since racially segregated schooling ended. But the quality of basic education is patchy and often atrocious, leaving many pupils without basic literacy and other skills.

Independent analyst Ralph Mathekga said: “There have been changes in terms of education policy, but implementation remains an issue. The failure to deal with the education challenges means that the education system will continue to remain a weaker link in the chain.”

Although technically a middleincome country, South Africa remains one of the most unequal nations on earth. The average black family’s income is a third less than the national annual average of R126 000.

“The biggest source of inequality is unemployment,” said Hart. “If someone doesn’t have a job, there’s an inequality even with someone with the lowest-level job.”

South Africa has notoriously high rates of violent crime. And although the annual number of murders has already halved to 16 000 a year since 1994, crime remains endemic, as does distrust of the police force.

“Very long-term solutions lie in two areas: one is more effective policing, which is perfectly possible, the other is socioeconomic conditions,” said Cronje.

Shannon Ebrahim, a political analyst and former presidential adviser, said: “Crime is high because many young people are unemployed.”

Graft has siphoned away money from government projects and the delivery of municipal services, denting faith in South Africa’s public institutions.

According to Mathekga, corruption has undermined the “capacity and integrity of the government bureaucracy”. Dissatisfaction over poor municipal services has boiled over into hundreds of violent antigovernment protests every year.

“It’s politically suicidal for the ANC to continue to publicly defend grotesque examples of corruption such as Nkandla,” said Cronje, referring to the state-paid upgrades to President Jacob Zuma’s private home — which the public protector ruled inappropriate and ordered him to partly repay.

A decade ago, policies helped to bring down HIV-infection rates by a third. But South Africa still has more than six million people living with the virus — the largest number in the world — and data show the infection rate is ticking up again.

More financing is needed, but that “can only be done via much higher levels of growth and much higher government revenue”, said Cronje.

Ageing infrastructure needs urgent upgrades to cope with an expanding population and bigger economy. State utilities are already struggling to keep the lights on at current population levels.

Challenges remained in infrastructure that improves the quality of life, such as water and electricity provision, said Hart. But work is also needed on roads, rails and other structures that provide the backbone to the economy.

“That’s the infrastructure on which business will hang their investment and in that create jobs,” said Hart. — AFP