Social grant recipients moved from only 2.7 million to 17 million people in South Africa
Just days after a marched aimed at removing President Jacob Zuma, a list of ANC government achievements is circulating on Facebook and Twitter. City Sun decided to publish the list as below:
- Senior Certificate Pass Rate: From 53.4% to 73.9%
- The number of graduates has doubled since 1994
- More than 3.1 million houses have been built
- Social Grant Recipients: From 2.7 million to 16 million
- The Economy has expanded by 85% over the past 19 years
- National income per capita has increased from R27,500 in 1993 to R38,500 in 2012 – an increase of 40%
- Disposable income per capita of households has increased by 43%
- Total employment has increased by more than 3.5 million since 1994
- Over 8 million school children are now benefitting from no-fee policies
- Secondary school enrolment from 51 percent in 1994 to around 80 percent currently
- About 9 million children are benefitting from the school feeding scheme and this has ensured that learners no longer have to study on an empty stomach
- Inflation has dropped from 9% in 1994 to 4.6% in 2015
- The budget deficit has decreased from 7.1% of GDP to 2.9% of GDP in 2015
- Despite high unemployment, more people are taking part in the economy, with 58.1% market participation in 2015, up from only 47.7% in 1994
- More than double the amount of black Africans are employed in 2015 than in 1994
- There are fewer informal homes in 2015 than in 1994, with a 131.3% increase in formal homes
- People with access to electricity has increased for cooking (228%), lighting (192%) and heating (58%) – while access to water has more than doubled (110%) and access to toilets has also increased significantly (151%)
- The number of low income households (LSM 1-3) has decreased significantly – showing a move to higher income homes (LSM 4-7 and LSM 8-10)
- The middle class has increased significantly – almost doubling since 1994
- Households living in extreme poverty has been been reduced from 52% of the black African population in 2002, to 20% in 2015
- More students are attending university than ever before – with 807,000 students enrolled in 2015, versus 385,200 in 1994
- Black South African students now make up the majority of students (70.1%) compared to only 20% in the late 1980s, and over 45% in the mid 90s
- There are more students studying towards a science, engineering or technology degree now than ever before (55,574 students in 2015, versus only 20,610 in 1994)
- The rate of new HIV infections since the turn of the millennium has effectively halved, with 321,500 new infections in 2015, compared to 646,800 in 1999
- The rate of still births has declined by 22% since 2001
- There are more professional nurses – and those enrolled to be nurses – than ever before. Growth of 50% and 115% respectively between 1998 and 2015
- There are 80% more GPs and 29% more specialists practicing in the public sector since 2000
- South Africa’s murder rate has halved since 1994/95 – from a rate of 68 murders per 100,000 population, to 34 per 100,000 population in 2015