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The SA Daily 19 February 2020

No safety, no investment

  • Out of 129 countries, SA is ranked as third most dangerous after Venezuela and Papua New Guinea. The top three safest are Qatar, Taiwan and United Arab Emirates. Disaggregated data shows that SA cities are ranked amongst the most dangerous in the world, with Pietermaritzburg third (after Caracas and Port Moresby), followed by Pretoria, Durban, Johannesburg and Port Elizabeth in eleventh place (see chart below).
  • SA citizens clearly face various social stresses, with concomitant implications for their economic behaviour. These same stress factors detract from real long-term investment which is so clearly needed for growth and employment.
  • SA is now widely known to be corrupt, with the ease of doing business having deteriorated, and having the highest inequality (per the Gini coefficient measure) as well as rocketing youth unemployment, a low employment-to-population ratio, sluggish economic growth, and still rising government debt.
  • In his recent State of the Nation Address, President Ramaphosa said that “investment and growth require a safe, stable and crime-free environment. More importantly, it is fundamental to the aspirations of all our people to live in security, peace and comfort”. Specialised measures, including establishing a Crime Detection University in Hammanskraal, are being undertaken by government to combat crime. Most such socio-economic resolutions would however require government, business, labour and civil society to work in concert.

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