The debate on President Jacob Zuma’s State of the Nation Address saw impassioned speeches by the leaders of South Africa’s two main opposition parties. We fact-checked key claims.
In his response to the State of the Nation Address, Democratic Alliance parliamentary leader Mmusi Maimane made a number of claims about electricity, employment, land reform and crime. Here are the claims that readers asked us to investigate.
Electricity
The claim: “Our economy has lost R300-billion since 2008 because, without a stable electricity supply, manufacturers cannot produce, investors are driven away and jobs are lost.”
Our verdict: A broad estimate
The Democratic Alliance obtained the R300-billion estimate from economist Dawie Roodt, chief economist at the Efficient Group, a JSE-listed financial services company.
Maimane’s chief of staff, André Coetzee, told Africa Check: “We engaged with Roodt on the methodology underlying his assertions and were satisfied that they were sound. His office also provided the technical data on which the figures were calculated for our researchers to review.”
Francois Stofberg, an economist at the Efficient Group, told Africa Check that they used different approaches in an attempt to “determine what the impact of a shortage of electricity supply is on the South African economy”. He explained that this included a “linear… forecast of economic growth before and after the electricity crisis”.
“Using this method we found that the economy would have been 10% larger in 2013 [when GDP stood at R3,400-billion] without the black-outs that occurred during the latter parts of 2007. Note that this excludes the recent black-outs,” Stofberg said.
He said that many other variables in the economy could have had a positive or negative effect on South Africa’s economic growth. These, he said, were difficult to quantify.
“However, it is evident from our estimates that a shortage of electricity… had a significant impact on GDP. Our estimates were an attempt to quantify these impacts,” said Stofberg. He added that “[n]one of these approaches are without criticism”.
The head of Wits University’s School of Economic and Business Sciences, Professor Jannie Rossouw, said that estimates like this would be influenced by the assumptions made by the economists.
“Naturally other assumptions will give other results, but [the Efficient Group’s] assumptions are sound enough,” said Rossouw.
Employment
The claim: “Despite all his past promises, what President Zuma failed to tell us last week was that, today, there are 1.6-million more South Africans without jobs than when he took office in 2009.”
Our verdict: Incorrect
The figure of 1.6-million was calculated using the Quarterly Labour Force Survey released by Statistics South Africa, Coetzee told Africa Check.
He said that they had compared data from the second quarter of 2009 (when Zuma took office) with the fourth quarter of 2014. This figure was based on the broad unemployment rate – which includes both unemployed people and discouraged job seekers.
This showed that the number of unemployed people increased by 1.67-million – from 5.64-million in the second quarter of 2009 to 7.31-million at the end of the 2014. But the 2009 unemployment figure has since been revised to 5.87-million.
The acting executive manager of labour statistics at Stats SA, Desiree Manamela, told Africa Check that the DA’s calculation should have been done using this figure, released by Stats SA in February last year.
The Quarterly Labour Force Survey is conducted in 30,000 households in South Africa. The data is then weighted to ensure that it is representative of South Africa as a whole. This weighing is influenced by population estimates between censuses. Once the 2011 Census data became available, the estimates could be more accurately recalculated and backdated.
Using the revised figures, the number of unemployed people has therefore increased by 1.4-million since Zuma took office, not 1.6-million as Maimane claimed.
Land reform
The claim: “The 17.5 million hectares of fertile soil in communal land areas must be unlocked for reform purposes. State-owned land must be fully audited and used to fast-track redistribution to deserving beneficiaries.”
Our verdict: Incorrect
Land reform numbers are tricky. Few accurate datasets exist and some of them are very outdated.
Take the land utilisation data set that forms the basis of Maimane’s claim. Although still in use by the Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, it was compiled in 1991. (An updated version should be released towards the end of next year, said the department’s spokesman, Makenosi Maro.)
The 1991 data showed that in the former apartheid-era homelands there were 2.5-million hectares of potentially arable land and 12-million ha of grazing land. Together with all other land uses – such as for nature conservation, forestry and towns – this amounted to 17.1-million ha in total.
To their credit, the DA admitted this large error. Coetzee said: “The reference to the full area as comprising fertile soil is erroneous in this context, however the need for tenure reform for the areas remaining under communal land tenure remains and would unlock massive agricultural potential for land reform beneficiaries.”
But it is a fallacy to think there are millions of hectares of state land ready to be redistributed, said Alex Dubb, a researcher at the University of the Western Cape’s Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS). Dubb helped compile a factsheet on state land available for redistribution based on 2002 data and their calculations then showed that only 675,449 ha could possibly be redistributed.
In the meantime a state land audit has been carried out and government is busy registering all its properties uncovered during the process with the Deeds Office. Once this has been carried out, we will have a much better picture of how much state land is available for redistribution and how much municipal land is available as commonage to poor households.
Crime
The claim: “But while our communities are being over-run by drug lords the President said nothing about crime! Where are the specialized anti-drug units? Drug crime has doubled since they were taken away.”
Our verdict: Incorrect
André Coetzee, Maimane’s chief of staff, told Africa Check that “anti-drug units were disbanded in 2004, and drug-related crime has more than doubled between 2004 and 2013”.
He said this was based on the 2013 Crime Statistics released by the South African Police Service.
According to the South African Police Service, reported drug-related crime has tripled since 2004. The latest crime statistics show that there were 84,001 cases in 2004/05 and 260,732 cases in 2013/14.
The drug-related crime ratio increased 2.7 times over the same period from 180.3 cases per 100,000 people in 2004/05 to 492.1 cases per 100,000 people in 2013/14. Ratios allow for crime levels to be accurately compared between different years in which population sizes vary.
But an increase in the reported number of drug-related crimes does not automatically mean that these crimes are on the rise.
A factsheet prepared by the Institute for Security Studies for Africa Check noted that “[c]rimes such as the illegal possession of firearms and ammunition, drug-related crime and driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs are detected during police action such as roadblocks and search and seizure operations. This means that these crimes will increase if there is an increase in police activity.”
Additional reporting by Anim van Wyk
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