Lack of black skills reflects our descent into disaster

China, one of South Africa’s partners in BRICS, has sustained its demographic transition with a GDP per capita growth in excess of 6 percent over six decades and significant human resources development.

At the start of the 1960s,

China reconciled its demographic transition with an aggressive one child policy which raised many questions.

In 2012, I was invited to

China where an expert group was debating the implications of the economy on its demography. We had five days of academia, practitioners and the National Bureau of Statistics of China getting into the statistics and deriving evidence to advise the politburo on this key question.

What was very striking was that a good number of the participants were from one child families and their bitter complaints and anxieties poured out.

There were two resolutions at the end of this intensive exercise.

First the one child policy was to be relaxed to two children to abet the country’s ageing population.

Second, China would grow through domestic consumption made possible by the one additional child, while retaining export growth.

Sadly, when birth rates started declining in South Africa in the past six decades, particularly among blacks, skilled employment showed no improvement.

In fact, among the 25-34 age group that sets the pace for the future, it has reversed.

The graph above shows that for the past 15 years, blacks have not moved up an inch in skilled employed human resources as a percentage of the employed.

It has remained at about 14 percent compared to 50 percent among Indians and 59.9 percent among whites.

The fact finder of the nation, Statistics SA, should open our eyes to the demographic disaster we have rapidly descended into.

Lehohla is the former Statistician-general of South Africa and former head of Statistics SA. He is the founder of the Pan African Institute for Evidence (PIE).