South Africa: key statistics ahead of the 2024 elections

Map of the administrative geography (provinces and municipalities) of South Africa, as of 2021. Drawn by Adrian Frith based on MDB Local Municipal Boundary 2018 dataset. (Via Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0 Deed)

Ahead of the 2024 election, we examined how South Africa has done on several important measures over the past few decades. We looked at the following topics

• murder;
• unemployment and how it has changed since 2000;
• social grants and how coverage has changed since democracy;
• state provision of housing; and
• HIV and life-expectancy.

Murder and crime

Crime consistently ranks as one of the two major concerns of South Africans, along with unemployment. But other than murder, crime rates are hard to measure because many crimes go unreported. Murder is both the most serious and best measured crime. It’s a proxy for how we’re doing on crime generally. Unfortunately the country is regressing.

From 1995 until about a decade ago South Africa was making headway. The murder rate was dropping. But for the past decade it has steadily got worse.

Number of murders in South Africa, April 2012 to March 2023, and the corresponding murder rate (murders per 100,000 people). Sources: SAPS and Thembisa

Read How bad is South Africa’s murder rate?

Unemployment

Our chronic, most pressing problem that we have failed to fix is unemployment.

The unemployment rate has not dropped below 20% since 2000. The graph was constructed using the quarterly labour force surveys published by Stats SA.

Read How unemployment has changed since 2000

Social grants

In the face of massive unemployment, the social grant system helps millions of people in South African to survive. Without it the country would be plunged into chaos. The following graph shows how the number of grant recipients has increased since democracy.

This chart shows how grant recipients have increased since 1994. Data was provided by UCT’s Centre for Social Science Research.

Read Here’s how South Africa’s social grant system has changed since 1994

Housing

The Reconstruction and Development Programme of the ANC in 1994 was its flagship programme and promised to provide everyone with houses. While much progress was made, there is still a long way to go. We found that the quality of data was unexpectedly poor, especially the 2022 census that was published this year.

Sources: Census 1996, 2001, 2011, 2022 from Stats SA

Read Housing in South Africa: How have we done since 1994?

HIV and life-expectancy

We examined how antiretroviral treatment has reversed the country’s decline in life-expectancy. The following graph of South Africa’s change in life-expectancy since the late 1980s and projected to 2030 is quite extraordinary. One would be hard-pressed to find a country in the world with life-expectancy as volatile as this. The first dip was due to the HIV epidemic. The second, much shorter one, was due to Covid. The good news is that life-expectancy appears to be on a sustained upward trajectory.

South Africa’s life-expectancy is now about 64. Barring any unforeseen catastrophes it will continue to rise to well above 65 by 2030, the highest it has ever been but still far below the world average. The data for the graph was sourced from the Thembisa HIV model.

Read South Africans are living longer, mostly thanks to HIV treatment

More about South Africa in numbers

• South Africans are living longer, mostly thanks to HIV treatment 01 December 2023
• How unemployment has changed since 2000 23 November 2023
• Here’s how South Africa’s social grant system has changed since 1994 02 November 2023

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