Out of the 15 claims we checked, the most – three – came from the Congress of the People’s manifesto, and these were all correct, about the percentage of the national budget spent on education, the government’s budget deficit and the number of South Africans connected to the energy grid.
Over the past few months, Africa Check has examined the claims made in the election manifestos of the country’s main political parties – the ruling African National Congress, the Democratic Alliance and the Economic Freedom Fighters. The International Labour Organization , a UN agency, compiles annual unemployment statistics for 189 countries, territories and areas of the world. Its estimates provide data on youth aged 15 to 24.
More recent data has since become available. From January to March 2024, the unemployment rate among black South Africans was 36.9%. The rate for white South Africans was 9.2%. But a similar claim can be found in a media release from the South African policy research and advocacy organisation, the Centre for Development and Enterprise . It says that ‘after a year of school more than 50% of grade 1 learners don’t know all the letters in the alphabet’, but doesn't give an attribution for the statistic.
“We documented letter-sound knowledge among samples of learners in no-fee charging schools in two provinces, namely the Eastern Cape and North West. We found that just 48% and 39% of these samples respectively could sound at least 26 letters correct per minute by the end of grade 1.” Africa Check contacted the National Treasury to confirm how much of the budget is allocated to education.
Defaulting on debt can cause ‘financial panic’ within and outside a country. When this happens, it makes future borrowing more difficult and expensive and slows economic growth and foreign investment.The UDM claimed a close enough ratio but was less accurate about the rand value of the debt. In 2023, South Africa’s finance minister predicted that debt would reach R5.84 trillion by 2025/56, but this is not the current figure.What this ratio means for the economy is not entirely agreed.
On the other hand, he explained, Japan’s notoriously high debt-to-GDP ratio of over 200% was seen as ‘more creditworthy’ because it was better equipped to repay those debts.
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