When Cyril Ramaphosa became South Africa’s president in 2018, his supporters said he would bring an end to “nine wasted years” under Jacob Zuma. “It could not get worse,” they said. But it did get worse — politically and economically.
The time has come for an unemotional debate about the “eight wasted years” under Ramaphosa. During the 2021 local government elections, the ANC suffered an 8.36 percentage point decline to 46.12%. If one looks at the economy, there were annual average GDP growth rates of 2.7% under Nelson Mandela (1994 to 1999), 4% under Thabo Mbeki (1999 to 2008), 1.9% under Jacob Zuma (2009 to 2017) and 0.6% under Ramaphosa (2018 to 2024).
The annual average GDP growth rate was three times faster during Zuma’s “nine wasted years”. Ramaphosa’s presidency is objectively the worst since 1994. His supporters blame the economic effects of the Covid pandemic.
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Yet from 2018 to 2024, 155 emerging and developing countries cruised to an annual average GDP growth rate of 3.7%, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Let us also not forget that the economy was collapsing before the pandemic and GDP grew by 0.3% in 2019. There were three consecutive quarters of declining GDP before the pandemic.
The recovery, with an annual average GDP growth rate of 1.1% from 2022 to 2024, has been one of the slowest in the world. This compares with annual average GDP growth rates of 4.2% and 5.4% for emerging and developing economies and emerging and developing Asia, respectively. Why is it impossible for South Africa to grow at the same rate as so many other emerging economies?
Ramaphosa’s business-friendly policies did not deliver increased investment. He hosted numerous investment conferences where companies got free publicity while making fake pledges worth hundreds of billions of rand. From 2017 to 2024, gross fixed capital formation (GFCF), a measure of total investment, collapsed by 16.7%.
As a percentage of GDP, it declined to 14.1% from 16.4%. Despite talk of a recovery, it would be difficult to see the green shoots with a powerful microscope. There is no evidence of an upturn and the IMF does not believe the hype During seven of the last nine quarters there has been declining investment in the economy.
From 2017 to 2024, real per capita public investment by general government and public corporations collapsed by 33.2%. There has been a public sector investment strike, which is the main reason for the decline of total investment.
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