Urgent changes needed in SA after the 2024 elections

Just one-week away from the 2024 General Election and 28-million eligible voters have hope in their hearts that things will improve in South Africa. On Wednesday 29 May 2024, South Africa takes to the polls yet again for arguably its most important election in 30-years of democracy. We thought it would be useful to address some important statistics ahead of the 2024 General Election, according to GroundUp.

2024 GENERAL ELECTION

For a nation hoping for the best but conditioned to expect the worst, the 2024 General Election brings with it hope that the job market will improve. Our chronic, most pressing problem is that of unemployment. Despite the African National Congress’s (ANC’s) best efforts, joblessness continues to rise.

In the first quarter of 2024 alone, joblessness increased by 0.8% to 32.9%. That’s another 300 000 people in South Africa without an income. That’s 8.2-million people out of 62 million who are therefore not economically active in out workforce. Although we shouldn’t forget the approximately 7 million who are believed to be gainfully employed in the informal sector, not paying SARS any taxes. According to data from Stats SA, unemployment has steadily worsened since 2008, and the Jacob Zuma era of state capture. It crossed the 20% threshold in 2018 and hasn’t looked back since.  

MURDER RATE

Prime amongst concerns for South Africa’s voters is crime. However, as more generalised crimes can be hard to measure – often because a lot simply go unreported – murder rates are the best measure for Mzansi’s crime. Unfortunately, ahead of the 2024 General Election, the African National Congress (ANC) will have to accept that it’s lost the war on crime and we are regressing as a nation. From 1994 till 2014, we saw the murder rate improve. However, over the last decade, perhaps aided by the economic stress of the COVID-19 pandemic, the murder rate has regressed badly.

*Source GroundUp via the South African Police Service

SASSA GRANTS

One thing the ANC has pushed strongly in the intervening years since the COVID-19 pandemic is its ‘pro-poor policies.’ President Ramaphosa proudly proclaims that South Africa has the most people on social welfare anywhere in Africa. Nearly 30-million people receive South African Social Security Agency grants of some sort.

Social Relief of Distress (SRD) was extended this year to run till March 2025. And the stipend to more than 10-million destitute beneficiaries was increased from R350 to R370. 4-million Older Persons and 13-million Childcare grants were also increased by 4.8% this year. However, civil society says that’s not enough to combat the increased cost of living. In 2024 alone, consumer inflation sits close to 6.2%. Eskom electricity tariffs have risen by 12.8% which has put power beyond the means of residents living near the poverty line (R760 per month).

RDP HOUSING

The Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) for housing was an ANC flagship programme back in 1994. Promises were made to provide millions of houses. While progress has made, the ruling party has fallen short of its goals. In fact, perhaps due to poor delivery, concrete data on RSP housing is hard to come by.

The ANC themselves claim to have built 5-million homes, while the Centre for Affordable Housing African (CAHF) says it has delivered no more than between 2- to 3-million subsidised houses for low-income beneficiaries. Many of the people who have moved into them say the houses are plagued with issues as well.