The DA was right about the financial state of the country’s municipalities and the literacy rate among primary school children.
According to party leader John Steenhuisen, the DA has a credible path to national government for the first time in 30 years if enough voters turn out on 29 May. “Of the 257 municipalities in South Africa, 151 are on the brink of financial collapse as they cannot pay their creditors, and 43 have already collapsed and are in crisis,” the DA claimed.
However, the same claim has often been made in the media, with the figures attributed to the national treasury. Briefing a parliamentary committee in September 2022, the treasury said that at the end of the 2021/22 financial year, 151 municipalities were bankrupt and insolvent. This meant that they were unable to pay creditors and third parties such as the South African Revenue Service. A further 43 were in “crisis”.
According to AGSA, the main sources of revenue for most municipalities are rates and taxes paid by property owners and consumers of municipal services. But consumers, including government institutions, are not paying municipalities what they owe. This has been a trend for many years, says the auditor.
But as with many statistics, cross-country comparisons can be tricky. Dr Neva Makgetla, a senior economist at the Trade and Industrial Policy Strategies research institute, previously told Africa Check that the definition of unemployment depends on how people in different regions look for work. Stats SA counts as “unemployed” those who were able to work, wanted to find work and were actively looking for work at the time of its surveys. At the end of 2023, the unemployment rate was 32.1%.
The absorption rate includes people of working age who may not be able to work. If we consider only those who were able to work but were discouraged from looking for work or had other reasons for not actively looking for work, the latest unemployment rate is 41.1%. However, according to Lizette Lancaster, an analyst at the Pretoria-based Institute for Security Studies , quarterly publications should ideally not be used to calculate annual data. The annual reports contain the “official and verified” statistics for each year, Lancaster told Africa Check.
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