South Africa is a better place to live than in 1994. A liberal constitution protects the rights of all citizens, no matter their race. The poor have more of their basic needs met. The share of households without electricity fell from 42% in 1996 to 10% in 2016, while the fraction going hungry has plummeted. Blacks make up 50% of the country's middle class, according to recent research. This is much lower than their overall share of the population (80%) but it is a sign of uneven progress. Black South Africans now account for more sales of suburban homes than whites do.
Most South Africans believe that race relations are better today than they were in 1994. A survey published in 2016 by the Institute of Race Relations (irr), a think-tank, found that 54% of respondents felt relations were better than a generation ago, with 22% saying they had stayed the same, and 20% believing they had worsened. According to the same study, just 5% of South Africans said "racism" was the biggest issue facing the country.
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That is the good news. The bad news is that most of the progress made since 1994 came before 2009. It was then that Jacob Zuma began his nine-year reign as president, during which time the thuggish kleptocrat and his cronies ransacked state-owned enterprises (soes), plundered local and provincial governments, and ravaged the law-enforcement institutions set up to curb such looting. The corruption of the ruling African National Congress (anc) predated Mr Zuma, and is outlasting him, but it was the former president who took venality to stratospheric levels.
The Zuma administration also ran the economy into the ground while ramping up public spending. The ratio of debt to gdp rose from 26% in 2008-9 to 56% in 2018-19. gdp per person is lower than it was in 2013. Analysis by Standard Bank suggests that, relative to the trajectory the country was on before Mr Zuma became president, his regime lost South Africa 1.1trn rand ($78bn) in gdp, 300bn rand in taxes, and more than 1m jobs.
The damage of the Zuma years extends beyond the economy. In a deeply unequal society with a violent past, a sense of mutual obligation is especially important. Yet, though South Africa has some of the largest mineral reserves on the planet, the commodity it needs most—trust—is in short supply.
Read the whole article here: https://www.economist.com/special-report/2019/04/25/cyril-ramaphosa-faces-a-daunting-task-if-he-wins-south-africas-election
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