The Big Read: Fat zero in numbers game

In the run-up to the May 7 elections we were bombarded with government messages about how well we are doing as a country.

"We have a good story to tell," the ANC told us. The past 20 years were lauded as being of fabulous stability, growth and prosperity.

That is largely true. Let's dig a little bit deeper, though. Let's forget the 20 years. Let's talk about the administration of President Jacob Zuma since 2009, when he rose to power on promises of a faster pace of transformation, job creation and economic growth.

How has that administration done, and what does that say about its performance in the next five years? At the end of the day, we can only truly measure our political leaders by how much they have achieved in their five-year terms.

It is instructive to look at three measures of success in Zuma's tenure: employment, government debt and economic growth.

By these measures the Zuma administration has squandered the gift the Mbeki administration handed it in 2008. Zuma has overseen a country that has lost jobs, got deeper into debt and is failing to grow its economy.

Last week Statistics SA announced that our unemployment rate had increased for the second straight quarter to 25.5% in the three months to June, up from 25.2% in the preceding quarter. The number of unemployed people increased to its highest since 2008.

It is worth recalling that, in the final quarter of 2008, when the ANC fired Thabo Mbeki, unemployment stood at 21.50%. In 2002, it had been at 30.40%, the worst ever recorded.

In the six years between it had been driven down to 21.5%.

If Zuma is about jobs, as he persistently promised in his election campaigning in 2009 and this year, then where are they? Anywhere else in the world a president who had overseen a jobs bloodbath of the nature Zuma has would not have a second chance at the top job.

Political animals like me tend to enjoy Bill Clinton's mantra: "It's the economy, stupid."

How has Zuma's economic prowess shown itself? According to the African Economic Outlook, South Africa's gross domestic product growth in 2008, when Mbeki was kicked out of office, was 5.5%. It declined to 3.6% the year Zuma took over and has remained in the doldrums since.

Last year GDP growth was a measly 1.9%. The World Bank has cut South Africa's economic growth forecast for this year to 2%. Reserve Bank governor Gill Marcus is on record as saying it might be difficult for South Africa to do better than last year's growth rate of 1.9%. The bank is projecting growth of 2.1% for 2014.

Should we blame the global economic meltdown? The US and European economies are already powering back. Sub-Saharan Africa is growing at an impressive rate, with the World Bank expecting the region's economy to expand by 5.8% this year and 5.9% next year.

What about government debt? Are our finances as healthy as they were under Mbeki and Trevor Manuel, the finance minister at the time? As Goldman Sachs partner Colin Coleman put it, when Nelson Mandela became president in 1994 he took over a state in crisis.

"South Africa had no foreign exchange reserves, double digit lending and inflation rates, and a debt-to-GDP ratio of 50%."

Today, as the new Zuma administration gets to work, our debt-to-GDP ratio is 46.10%.

When Mbeki was humiliated in 2008, he had managed to drive it right down to 28.3%.

The Zuma years have seen the state spending wantonly (particularly on civil service salaries and welfare payments), thus driving government debt so sharply up that the IMF says there is a 10% chance that the ratio will reach 63% by 2020.

Now, there is a lot that one can find fault with in how our country has been run in the past five years under the Zuma administration. But the key challenge we face is to ensure that our children are off the streets and getting an education while the economy grows fast enough to absorb them into the labour market. That is the key challenge of our time and the reason why we put politicians in power.

On this score, our choice of president in 2009 has failed dismally and there is no indication that the next five years under Zuma will be any better.

The National Development Plan, which is a brilliant document, seems to have become a fashion statement rather than a plan to be implemented. Every week now Zuma makes pronouncements that trash the NDP's advice.

The numbers quoted above do not lie. They are not "emotional". They are just facts. They speak volumes.